Dr. McShea, also a writing fellow at the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City, is a historian with research interests in the early modern Church, especially in France and in colonial and missionary contexts.  She is also interested broadly in Catholicism as a bearer and shaper of culture and in the dynamic relationship of the Church to secular society.  

Dr. McShea completed her PhD in Early Modern European History at Yale University, MTS in the History of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, and BA in History at Harvard University.  She has also taught at the University of Nebraska Omaha and Columbia University, where she was an ACLS/Mellon New Faculty Fellow. She has held research positions at the Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions, and the James Madison Program at Princeton University, with additional research funding from the French Society for Western History, Notre Dame's Cushwa Center, and others.  

She is the author of Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France​ (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and has two more books forthcoming: Peer of Princes: Marie de Vignerot, Duchesse d'Aiguillon, Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Protégée (Pegasus Books) and Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know (Ignatius Press; Augustine Institute). She has published in a range of journals and magazines, including The Sixteenth Century Journal, The Josephinum Journal of Theology, The Journal of Jesuit Studies, and First Things.  

To read more about Dr. McShea and her work, visit www.bronwenmcshea.com.