My research focuses on how Protestant ideas in the period of the English Reformation functioned within their historical context, and interconnected both with wider cultural values and with individual identities and psychological needs. My first book was about how the doctrine of predestination was communicated to everyday Protestants through printed sermons and other forms of accessible literature. My new book will be about the ways in which religious ideas informed masculine identities in early modern England. I am also interested in the history of emotions, and one of my current projects looks at the interplay between emotions and radical political and religious ideas in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I in 1649.
As an undergraduate, I read History at the University of Sussex (BA, 2000), followed by postgraduate studies at Oxford (MSt, 2001; DPhil, 2006), and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2008-11). I have spent the majority of my professional career in Oxford, as a lecturer at a number of different colleges, and arrived at Regent’s Park in 2013
My role in College
As a Director of Studies for History and the History joint schools, my job is to ensure that my students receive the best possible education during their three-year degrees. I am passionate about providing high quality teaching, within an intellectually stimulating and supportive environment. I always welcome applications from young people who have a passion for the study of History and an independent mind, even if – indeed, especially if – they do not think that Oxford is for people ‘like them’. Having come into higher education from a ‘widening participation’ background myself, I am particularly aware of the work that Oxford colleges need to do, both to build undergraduate cohorts that are reflective of wider society, and to unleash the potential of all students once they are on-course. In my role as the chair of the college’s Access and Outreach Working Group, I see it as my job to help to establish a strong connection between attracting applications from candidates who might never have considered applying to Oxford and ensuring that as students they have the support in place to allow them to excel in their degree.
Teaching is my great passion, and I was deeply honoured to win the Oxford University Student Union’s award for ‘Outstanding Tutor in the Humanities’ in 2016, which was based on nominations by students, and to be shortlisted for the award again in 2018. I was also shortlisted for the award of Outstanding Pastoral Support in 2017, which I think reflects the commitment of all the History tutors at Regent’s to putting student welfare first, and to seeing academic success as something which springs from a sense of feeling secure and supported in one’s wider life. In 2024, I headed up the team of Regent’s History tutors who received a special commendation at the Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Awards, which recognised our work in helping students, often from access backgrounds, to excel in Finals. Here I was able to demonstrate how much ‘value added’ we were able to achieve between Prelims and Finals grades, but at least equally valuable for me is the work that we do with students to improve their confidence in developing and articulating their own voice and perspective.
For undergraduates, the bulk of my teaching is in early modern British and European history, between around 1400 and 1700, and I teach the Witchcraft Optional Subject. For the Approaches to History paper, I teach the Sociology and Gender strands. I also convene my own Further Subject called Gender and Protestant Cultures in England, 1558 to 1658.
I am always interested in working with graduate students, and am an experienced doctoral supervisor. I am particularly keen to work on projects which concern the relationship between religious ideas, gender and the emotions in early modern England.
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Selected Publications
Books
- Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590-1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013)
Articles and Research Papers
- 'William Perkins: The Ambivalent Demonologist', in J. Machielsen, ed., The Science of Demons (forthcoming, 2019)
- 'England’s ‘atheisticall generation’: Orthodoxy and unbelief in the revolutionary period', in G. Southcombe and G. Tapsell, eds, Revolutionary England, c. 1630-c. 1660: Essays for Clive Holmes (London: Routledge, 2017)
- 'William Perkins, "Atheisme," and the Crises of England’s Long Reformation', Journal of British Studies 50.4 (2011), pp. 790-812
- 'Richard Greenham and the Calvinist Construction of God', The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61.4 (2010), pp. 729-45
- 'Calvinist Theology and Pastoral Reality in the Reign of King James I: The Perspective of Thomas Wilson', The Seventeenth Century 23.2 (2008), pp. 173-97