Scott K. Taylor specializes in the history of early modern Europe, especially Spain. He arrived at the University of Kentucky in 2012 after spending 11 years teaching at Siena College. Prior to that he earned his PhD at the University of Virginia in 2001 and his AB at the University of Chicago in 1992. His most recent book is Ambivalent Pleasures: Soft Drugs and Embodied Anxiety in Early Modern Europe (Cornell, 2024). His first book was entitled Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (Yale, 2008). 

Currently he is working on a project that uses the journals of James Boswell to explore the set and setting of drug and alcohol use in late 18th-century Europe. He is also planning a new project on street life in 18th-century Madrid.

Dr. Taylor is willing to advise graduate students who want to work in early modern Spanish history or the history of drugs and alcohol in early modern Europe.