Magdalena S. Sánchez is professor of History at Gettysburg College. Her research centers on sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish history, focusing on the women of the “House of Austria,” as the Habsburg family was known in Spain.  Her book, The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun (JHU Press, 1998), looks at three Habsburg women at the Spanish court during the reign of Philip III (1598-1621) and explores the informal ways that women could influence politics. Her last book is Infanta. The Short, Remarkable Life of Catalina Micaela (2025), which draws heavily on a correspondence comprising some 3000 letters between her and husband, the duke of Savoy.