Associate Professor of History, Ave Maria University
Dr. Michael Breidenbach is an historian of American politics, religion, law, and culture. He is an Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University and a Senior Affiliate for Legal Humanities at the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the author of "Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America" (Harvard University Press, 2021), which was runner-up for the "Journal of the American Revolution" Book of the Year Award. He is co-editor of "The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty" (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which has been cited in Supreme Court amicus briefs. His next two projects are on the politics of naming in Revolutionary America and on nineteenth–century American Catholicism. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Washington Post, and First Things.
Dr. Breidenbach was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022. He has held research positions at Princeton University; St. John's College, Oxford; Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Rothermere American Institute, Oxford; Wolfson College, Cambridge; McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania; University of Florida; Villanova University; and Collegium Institute. He has also appeared on national television and radio programs.
He lives in Southwest Florida with his wife, Janice Chik Breidenbach, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University, and their son.
Join our weekly newsletter to receive relevant updates and news about our upcoming events