West Virginia University’s Dr. Matthew Vester will add a new volume to his passport in the months ahead.

The assistant professor of history in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will complete a month-long study program in Germany this summer before spending the 2006-07 academic year in Italy.

In August, Vester embarks for Munich , where he’ll be the recipient of aLearn German in Germanygrant from the German Academic Exchange Service. Sponsored by the German government, the grant funds a month-long language study program at the Goethe Institute in Munich.

Communication truly is academic for international study, Vester said.

This will enable me to improve my German skills so that I can read the secondary German-language scholarship on Alpine studies more effectively and discuss my project with German-language scholars,he said.

After that, it’s a longer foray to Florence , Italy . Vester also earned a Villa I Tatti Fellowship from the Harvard University Institute for Italian Renaissance Studies. He’ll spend the 2006-2007 academic year there researching his project,The Geography of Political Culture in the Early Modern Alps: The Val d’Aosta, 1550-1630.

That project employsmicro-historicalmethods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis to examine political culture in the Alpine duchy of Aosta during the late Renaissance.

Vester received his Ph.D. from the University of California , Los Angeles , in 1997.

His area of specialization is Early Modern Europe, and his research interests include comparative social and political culture in old regime France and Italy , Alpine history, local political geography and family history. His work has been published in several history journals.

For more information, contact Vester at matt.vester@mail.wvu.edu or 304-293-2421, ext. 5232.