Michael Breidenbach

Dr. Michael Breidenbach is Associate Professor and Chair of History at Ave Maria University and Senior Affiliate for Legal Humanities at the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an historian of politics, religion, law, and culture in early America and the Atlantic World.

He is the author of Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2021), a history of religious liberty and church–state relations in the Atlantic World. He is also co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In addition to his articles in academic journals and edited volumes, he has written for publications such as The Atlantic, Washington Post, and First Things. He is currently writing a book on the history of naming in early America.

Professor 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; the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford; Wolfson College, Cambridge; Villanova University; McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; and the Collegium Institute. He has also appeared on national television and radio programs.

He obtained his Ph.D. in History from King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholar. He was a visiting graduate student in History at the Sorbonne in Paris and earned his M.Phil. with Distinction in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and with departmental honors from Northwestern University with a B.A. in History and American Studies. He also received a Level 2 Award with Distinction in Wines from the London-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust.