William John ("Bill") Connell (born July 22, 1958) is an American historian and holder of the Joseph M. and Geraldine C. La Motta Chair in Italian Studies at Seton Hall University.

Senator Lowell Weicker and a job as a gardener on the island of Elba,[4] he worked in banking for the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and then as research assistant for columnist Joseph Alsop before entering graduate school in History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in 1989.

[8] His NPR broadcast, "Machiavelli Faces Unemployment," won the Listener Choice Award as the favorite "Academic Minute" of 2011-2012.

2008), co-authored with Giles Constable, recounts the case of a man who was hanged for throwing dung at a painting of the Virgin Mary and has been published in Italian, Spanish, Russian, Romanian and Farsi translations.

Connell’s archival research on the life and career of Niccolò Machiavelli resulted in a widely praised translation of The Prince (2005, rev.

[17][18][19] In 2013 Connell solved a longstanding philological problem, previously considered a puzzle "awaiting its Rosetta Stone,"[20] by showing that Machiavelli completed The Prince in its final version in the spring of 1515.

[25] In recent years Connell's research has focused on the Renaissance revolution in historical thought and on connections between northern and southern Europe in the Early Modern period.

In its conclusion,Della Republica Ecclesiastica, written by the important humanist Donato Giannotti in 1541, proposed reforming the Catholic Church as a republic, with the Pope becoming a ceremonial figure, all administration passing to the College of Cardinals, and bishops to be elected by the people and clergy of each diocese.

Connell has lectured at the Institute for Universal History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and the Fondazione Luigi Firpo in Turin.