Joshua Fitzgerald is a 2025 Munby Fellow in Bibliography with the Cambridge University Library (CUL) and a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College, specialising in Nahua (commonly “Aztec”) Visual and Material Culture and Museum Studies. His Munby project builds upon his first book An Unholy Pedagogy: Visions of Learning from Mesoamerica, 1300-1600 (under contract with CUP), which reveals the significance of place-based education and material culture for Nahuas learning under Spanish-Colonial pedagogues. Josh is an affiliated fellow with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Faculty in History, Centre for Latin American Studies, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) and the Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems (VIEWS) Project. His research interests include Nahua-Colonial education and learning sciences, Nahua women as warriors and archivists in Mesoamerican visual culture, zooarchaeology and ethnography about Natural Science, food-art archives and ritual practices relating to amaranth and chia material culture and Indigenous art and heritage in video and board games (1850s to present-day). 

Josh received his PhD (History) and Museum Studies certification with the University of Oregon in 2019 and was the 2019-20 Director’s Office Graduate Fellow with the Getty Research Institute (Digital Florentine Codex). In 2020, he and his family moved to Cambridge to start the Rubinoff JRF in “Art as a Source of Knowledge” (Churchill College). He works to spark interest in Mexico and Mexican heritage by contributing to exhibitions and public engagement activities (e.g. Being Human Festival 2023 and 2024 Cambridge Festival) and, most recently, his MAA collections research and poetry(!) on board games were sponsored by Cambridge Creative Encounters and UCAM SHAPE Hub.