Seminar Programmes for the Current Academic Year
Michaelmas 2025
Convenors: Lorna Hutson, Joe Moshenska, Bart Van Es
Dates: Tuesdays, Weeks 1, 3, 5 & 7
Time: 5.15-7.00 p.m.
Venue: Merton College, TS Eliot Lecture Theatre (with the exception of Week 7)
Week 1, 14 October, 5.15 p.m.
‘Meet the Faculty’ with Profs Colin Burrow, Joe Moshenska, Ted Tregear and Gillian Woods
Week 3, 28 October, 5.15 p.m.
Speakers: Professor Jane Degenhardt (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Professor Henry Turner (Rutgers)
‘Shakespeare's Dark Cosmologies’
Week 5, 11 November, 5.15 p.m.
Speaker: Prof. Tiffany Stern (Shakespeare Institute)
‘Shakespeare’s Ballad Business’
Week 7, 25 November, 5.15 p.m. Oxford CEMS in the Schwarzman: Early Modern Conversations in Ecology
(Schwarzman Lecture Theatre L1; with a reception in room 10.302)
Speaker: Prof. Bart Van Es (English)
‘True Fire: Saint Augustine, the Climate Crisis, and Creative Non-Fiction’
Speaker: Prof. Francesca Southerden (Italian)
‘Affective Ecologies in Petrarch’s Lyric Poems’
All welcome; refreshments provided.
Convenors: Ian Archer, Alexandra Gajda, Steven Gunn and Lucy Wooding
Dates: Thursdays, every week
Time: 5.00 pm
Venue: Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College (except 23 October); online via Teams (please email ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk)
16 October Dr Alexandra Gajda (Jesus College) and Dr Ellen Paterson (Keble College) ‘Prosperity, Petitions, and Parliament: Peace, Union and Economic Debate in Early Jacobean England’
Pauline Croft, ‘Free Trade and the House of Commons 1605-1606’, Economic History Review, 28 (1975), 17-27; S.G.E. Lythe, ‘The Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Debate on Economic Integration’, Journal of Scottish Political Economy 5 (1958), 219-28; Alexandra Gajda, ‘War, peace and commerce and the Treaty of London (1604)’, Historical Research, 96 (2023), 459-72.
23 October Lower Lecture Room Dr Hannah Dawson (King’s College, London) ‘Early Modern Selfhood Revisited: the Case of Feminism’
Mary Astell, Reflections on Marriage (1706), preface; Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792 etc), chapters 1-5.
30 October Dr Richard Blakemore (University of Reading) ‘Sailing upon Storied Seas: The Maritime Environment in Seafarers’ Writings, 1650-1750’
Steve Mentz, Shipwreck Modernity: Ecologies of Globalization, 1550-1719 (2015);
Serpil Opperman, ‘Storied Seas and Living Metaphors in the Blue Humanities’, Configurations, 27 (2019), 443-61; Richard J. Blakemore, ‘Singing the Sea: Seafarers and the Maritime Environment in Early Modern Balladry’, in Angela McShane and Tim Reinke-Williams, eds, From the Margins to the Centre in Seventeenth-Century England (2024), 105-31.
6 November Olivia Bennison (St. Edmund Hall) ‘“The thing is no Goblin; but the very party we talk on”: Self-fashioning and Mobility Aids in seventeenth-century Britain’
Alanna Skuse, Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England (2021), ch. 4 ‘Acting the Part: Prosthetic Limbs’, 81-108; David Turner and Alan Withey, 'Technologies of the Body', History 99 (2014), 775-96.
13 November Prof. Michael Braddick (All Souls College) ‘Rethinking the 1650s’
John Morrill, ‘A glorious resolution’, in The Nature of the English Revolution (1993), ch. 19; Blair Worden, The English Civil Wars, 1640-1660 (2010), chs. 4–5.
20 November Dr Sonia Tycko (University of Edinburgh) in discussion with Prof. Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter College) ‘Captured Consent: Contract Labor in English Charity, Colonization, and War, 1600–1700’
Sonia Tycko, “The Legality of Prisoner of War Labour in England, 1648–1655,” Past & Present 246 (2020), 35–68; Douglas Hay, ‘England, 1562–1875: The Law and Its Uses’, in Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, eds, Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955, ed. (2004), 59–116.
27 November Dr Tim Reinke-Williams (University of Northampton) ‘William Sancroft’s Jest-Book; or, what did a seventeenth-century archbishop find funny?’
Patrick Collinson, From Cranmer to Sancroft (2006), ch. 8; Tim Reinke-Williams, ‘Misogyny, Jest-Books and Male Youth Culture in Seventeenth-Century England’, Gender and History, 21:2 (2009); Tim Somers, ‘Jesting Culture and Religious Politics in Seventeenth-Century England’, Historical Research, 267 (2022).
4 December Prof. Clare Jackson (Trinity Hall, Cambridge) ‘Writing James VI and I’
Clare Jackson, The Mirror of Great Britain: a life of James VI & I (2025).
Convenors: Natalia Nowakowska, Giora Sternberg, Giuseppe Marcocci, Filippo de Vivo, Howard Hotson
Dates: Tuesdays in weeks 2, 4, 6 & 8
Time: 2.00 to 3.30 p.m
Venue: Rector’s Drawing Room, Exeter College
2.00 p.m. Tuesday 21 October 2025
‘Towards a History of Misunderstandings: The Missionaries’ Dilemma’
Peter Burke (Cambridge), Chair: Filippo de Vivo
2.00 p.m. Tuesday 4 November 2025
‘The Social Roots of Religious Violence in Sixteenth-Century Paris’
Tom Hamilton (Durham), Chair: Giora Sternberg
2.00 p.m. Tuesday 18 November 2025
‘Survivors: The Converted Jews of Lisbon after the Massacre of 1506’
Giuseppe Marcocci (Oxford), Chair: Giora Sternberg
2.00 p.m. Tuesday 2 December 2025
‘German Mining Science and the Quest for Metals in the Early Modern World’
Gabriele Marcon (Vienna), Chair: Howard Hotson
Convenors: An Van Camp (Ashmolean Museum), Dr. Niko Munz (Christ Church) and Niklas Groschinski (Merton College)
Dates: Thursdays in weeks 3, 5 & 7
Time: 5.00 p.m.
Venue: Lecture Room 2, Christ Church
30th October: Prof. Jeanne Nuechterlein (University of York)
‘Mathematics and Meaning in the Art of Dürer and Holbein’
13th November: Peter Schade (Head of Framing, The National Gallery, London)
‘Framing in Museums’
27th November: Desmond Shawe-Taylor (Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, 2005–2020)
‘Royal Attitudes to Raphael and Renaissance Art from Henry VIII to Victoria and Albert’
Open to all.
Convenors: Ross Moncrieff and Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet
Dates: Tuesdays (except Week 6), Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7
Time: 5.00–6.30 p.m. (except Week 6)
Venue: Hovenden Room, All Souls College
This seminar aims to provide a forum to discuss connective and comparative global intellectual history, bringing together scholars across different specialisms to generate productive conversations about the global nature of early modern and modern intellectual developments and their relationship to empire, religion, science, culture, and much more.
Week 1, Tuesday 14 October, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr Yu Sakai (University of Cambridge)
The Global South in the East? Imagining a Transnational Political Subject in the Japanese Empire
Week 2, Tuesday 21 October, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr Pascale Siegrist (German Historical Institute)
Spatial Solidarity: Anarchy, Geography, and the Search for a Science of Global Sociability
Week 3, Tuesday 28 October, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Professor Sujit Sivasundaram (Cambridge)
Thinking and Sensing with the Small: A Material History of Ideas in the Indian Ocean
Week 4, Tuesday 4 November, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Professor Nicolas Standaert (KU Leuven)
The Chinese Gazette in European Sources: Joining the Global Public in the Early Qing Dynasty
Week 5, Tuesday 11 November, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Professor Sinem Casale (University of Minnesota)
Translating the Image: Art, Science and Global Imagination in the first Islamic Description of the New World (Tarih-i Hind-i Garbī / History of the West Indies)
Week 6, Monday 17 November, 4.30 p.m.
Speaker: Professor Faisal Devji (University of Oxford)
Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Book Launch)
Week 6, Thursday 20 November, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr Chloe Ireton (UCL)
Writing an Intellectual History from below: Methodological and theoretical reflections from Slavery and FREEDOM in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic (Cambridge, 2025)
Week 7, Tuesday 25 November, 5.00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr Shiru Lim (Leiden University)
Barbarism, religion, and the tsars: Eighteenth-century Europe imagines the Treaty of Nerchinsk
Convenor: Jessica Goodman
Dates: Thursdays, Weeks 1, 3, 5 & 7
Time: 12.30 – 2 p.m. (except Week 3)
Venue: Maison Française d'Oxford (except Week 3)
Week 1, October 16, 12.30-2 p.m, Maison Française d'Oxford
Introductory session: all welcome to meet and share research projects.
Week 3, October 30, 12.15-1.45 p.m, St John's (t.b.c.)
Vanessa de Senarclens (Humboldt University)
'Un deuil impossible ? Les livres anciens déplacés par la guerre et leur statut mémoriel en Pologne et en Allemagne'
Week 5, November 13, 12.30-2 p.m, Maison Française d'Oxford
Thom Murphy, New College, Oxford
‘Borrowed Originals in Du Bellay's Roman Poems'
Week 7, November 27, 12.30-2 p.m, Maison Française d'Oxford
Keiko Kawano, Okayama University
'Critique de l’apologie et art chrétien — Pascal dans Diderot'
Convenors: Filippo de Vivo (St Edmund Hall); Leah Clark (Kellogg); Jane Crawshaw Stevens (Brookes); Zoe Farrell (St Edmund Hall); Federica Gigante (History of Science Museum); Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter); Emanuela Vai (Worcester)
Dates: Tuesdays, Weeks 3, 5 & 7
Time: 4.30 p.m.
Venue: St. Edmund Hall (see events for weekly venues)
28th October - Elizabeth Currie (Central St Martins and V&A) On and Off the Canvas: Street Life in Early Modern Rome
11th November - Maria Gloria Tumminelli (Cambridge) Fear and Fortune: Gypsy Women between Image, Devotion, and Control in Early Modern Italy
25th November - Claire Judde de Larivière (Toulouse) Who did Renaissance people think they were? Class consciousness, sense of belonging, and social categories in Venice 1400-1600
For details and further updates click here.
Convenors: Sylvia Alvares-Correa (Christ Church), Michael Bax (Magdalene College), Tania Bride (Balliol College), Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter College), Daniel O’Driscoll (Jesus College), and Glyn Redworth (Exeter College)
Dates: Wednesdays in Weeks 2, 4, 6 & 8
Time: 4.30-6.15 p.m.
Venue: Rector’s Drawing Room, Exeter College
Week 2 | Wednesday 22 October, 4.30-6.15pm
‘Rights and Obligations in the Early Modern Hispanic World’
Tamar Herzog | Harvard University
Inaugural Talk of the 2025-26 Academic Year
Week 4 | Wednesday 5 November, 4.30-6.15pm
‘Mobility and Cosmopolitanism in the Early Modern Spanish Empire’
Adolfo Polo y La Borda | University of Nottingham
Week 6 | Wednesday 19 November, 4.30-6.15pm
‘New Christian Materiality: Reflections on a Project’
Francisco Bethencourt | King’s College London
Week 8 | Monday 3 December, 4.30-6.15 pm
‘Art and Sustainability in the Early Modern Iberian World’
Charlene Villaseñor Black | Worcester College, University of Oxford
Convenors: Ros Ballaster, Christine Gerrard, Nicole Pohl, Tess Somervell, David Taylor, Carly Watson, Abigail Williams
Dates: Tuesdays in weeks 2, 4 & 6
Time: 5.30–7.00 p.m (except Week 4)
Venue: Schwarzman 10.303
Week 2: 21st October, 5.30–7.00 p.m.
Joe Hone (Newcastle)
‘The Attribution Game’
Week 4: 4th November, 12.30–2 p.m.
Michael Powell-Davies (Birkbeck)
‘“6am bad, 7am bad bad”: The Diaries of William Woodman, Wigmaker of London (1706–1708)’
Week 6: 18th November, 5.30–7.00 p.m.
Roundtable: ‘Jane Austen at 250’
With Ros Ballaster, Sandiew Byrne, Octavia Cox and Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford)
Convenor: Hanna Sinclair
Dates: Mondays, Weeks 1, 3, 5 & 7
Time: 4.30 p.m.
Venue: Memorial Room, Jesus College
13 October Elizabeth Norton (Independent Researcher)
‘Constructing a Queen: The Career of Jane Seymour from Gentlewoman, to Queen, to Central Dynastic Figure’
27 October Elena Taddei (University of Innsbruck)
‘A Princess of House d’Este at the English Court: Mary of Modena Between Religious-Political Alienation and Cultural Transfer’
10 November Susannah Lyon-Whaley (University of York)
‘Her Material World: Queens’ Stuff in the Global Seventeenth-Century’
24 November Liesbeth Geevers (Lund University)
‘Male Marriage Gaps, Dynastic Centralisation and Habsburg Trust Fund Babies: Analysing Early Modern Dynasties from a Long(er)-Term Perspective’
Everyone is welcome, and a drink reception will follow the seminar.
Convenors: Dr Tracey Sowerby and Antonio Pattori
Dates: Tuesdays, Weeks 2, 4, 6 & 8
Time: 4.15 p.m.
Venue: Swire Seminar Room, 12 Merton St, University College (easiest access via Merton St) and online (please contact the convenors for link)
21 October: Saqib Baburi (University of Edinburgh), ‘Between London and Arcot: The ‘Lost’ Diplomacy Behind the Treaty of Paris, 1763’
4 November: Discussion session on sub-ambassadorial diplomatic actors.
Reading: Birgit Tremml-Werner and Dorothee Goetze, ‘A Multitude of Actors in Early Modern Diplomacy’, Journal of Early Modern History, 23/5 (2019), 407-22 and Maurits Ebben and Louis Sicking, ‘Introduction’, in Maurits Ebben and Louis Sicking (eds.), Beyond Ambassadors: Consuls, Missionaries, and Spies in Early Modern Diplomacy (2021), 1-16.
18 November: Aditi Gupta (University of Oxford), ‘A French Resident at the Nawab's Court: Indo-French Diplomacy in Early Colonial India’
2 December: Ross Moncrief (University of Oxford), ‘Macartney and the Manchus: The Impact of British understandings of Qing Ethnic Tensions on Sino-British Relations.’
Convenors: Nicholas Cronk (St Edmund Hall) and Jacob Chatterjee (New College)
Dates: Various (see below)
Time: 5.00 p.m (unless otherwise specified)
Venue: New College, Lecture Room 6 (unless otherwise specified)
An interdisciplinary research seminar supported by the Faculty of History, the Faculty of Modern Languages, and the Voltaire Foundation
22 Oct. Tim Stuart-Buttle (University of York)
‘Hobbes before the Enlightenment’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
13 Nov. Antoine Lilti (Collège de France)
Besterman Lecture: ‘The Three Languages of Universality: Thinking Globally in the Enlightenment’
(Magdalen College, the Grove Auditorium, 5.00 pm)
14 Nov. 9am – 1pm. Voltaire Foundation Workshop: Presentations by postdoctoral students from Voltaire Foundation and Turin Humanities Programme (Fondazione 1563). Discussion chaired by Antoine Lilti (Collège de France).
(Maison Française d’Oxford, Norham Road)
19 Nov. James Hanrahan (Trinity College, Dublin)
‘Representations of Origins in Enlightenment Thought: the Voltairean Exception’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
24 Nov. Dan Edelstein (Stanford University)
The Revolution to Come (2025): Book Presentation and Discussion
(joint session with the Oxford Political Thought seminar).
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
26 Nov. Lisa Kattenberg (University of Amsterdam)
‘Liberty and its Limits in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch-Spanish Mapuche Triangle’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
27 Nov. Michelle Charters OBE (Head of International Slavery Museum, Liverpool)
‘International Slavery Museum: the Journey, Progress and Plans’
(Linacre College, Tanner Room, 5.30 pm) followed by a drinks reception.
Voltaire Foundation Enlightenment Values Lecture
3 Dec. Jacob Donald Chatterjee (New College, Oxford)
‘Robert Sharrock and the Transformation of Christian Epicureanism in England and Western Europe, 1642–1732’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
End of term drinks.
Convenors: Margaret Bent (All Souls) and Joseph W. Mason (University of Cambridge)
Dates: Thursdays, Weeks 3, 5 & 8
Time: 5.00 p.m. (GMT)
Venue: Online via Zoom (register using this form)
If you have any questions, please send an email to Joe Mason at all.souls.music.seminars@gmail.com.
Week 3, 30 October, 5.00 p.m.
Presenter: Anne Walters Robertson, The University of Chicago
Title: A cycle of masses for all seasons in the Burgundian court
Discussants: Andrew Kirkman (University of Birmingham) and Sean Gallagher (Boston, New England Conservatory)
Week 5, 13 November, 5.00 p.m.
Presenters: Elina Hamilton, University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, Peter Lefferts, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba, Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences
Title: Theinred of Dover (fl. c. 1300): A new context for him in fourteenth-century music theory
Week 8, 4 December, 5.00 p.m.
Presenter: Kerry McCarthy, independent scholar
Title Voice-parts and voice-types in Tudor England
Discussants: David Skinner (University of Cambridge), and Andrew Johnstone (Trinity College, Dublin)
Convenors: Dirk Meyer (Queen’s), Matthew Shaw (Queen’s), Lesley Smith (HMC)Convenors: Dirk Meyer (Queen’s), Matthew Shaw (Queen’s), Lesley Smith (HMC)
29 October, 5.15 p.m.
Daniel Schwemer (Würzburg)
‘Ancient Kings, a New Language (and sometimes wheelbarrows): a decade of field epigraphy at the Hittite capital Boğazköy-Ḫattuša’
For over a hundred years, archaeologists have been exploring Boğazköy-Ḫattuša, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the former capital of the Hittite Empire. The more than 30,000 clay tablets and fragments of cuneiform texts found in Boğazköy-Ḫattuša are among the most important sources for the history of Anatolia and the ancient Near East during this period. The lecture will present these cuneiform finds, and discuss significant discoveries from recent excavations.
Memorial Room, The Queen’s College
13-14 November
In partnership with CMTC, Julia Smith is convening a two-day colloquium:
Heritage Science and Manuscripts from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: new directions in the study of written artefacts
Schulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College
Free to all; no registration required.
For more information:
Convenors: Clémence Smith and Kathryn Hempstead
Dates: Wednesdays, Weeks 2, 4, 6 & 8
Time: 5.15 p.m.
Venue: Schwarzman 10.302
A friendly and collaborative space for graduate students working on the early modern period across Faculties.
Week 2 – 22 October Welcome Event
New and returning graduates are warmly invited to our first event. We will be sharing advice on relevant libraries and resources for new students and providing information about our subsequent meetings.
Week 4 – 5 November Discussion Group
An opportunity to discuss current research, brainstorm ideas, and plan for the year ahead. Students are welcome to bring questions and issues they’re having to the group to discuss and seek advice.
Week 6 – 19 November Writing Workshop
Need some help with your writing? Graduates are encouraged to share draft material ahead of this session. Join us for a writing workshop to gather peer feedback and banish writer’s block. Written extracts up to 2000 words in length will be circulated a week before this session. Please contact the convenors to sign up for the writing workshop by 12 November.
Week 8 – 3 December Early Modern Christmas
Celebrate the end of term with some early modern Christmas snacks!
Convenors: H. Smith (St. Hilda’s); B. Harris (Worcester); P. Gauci (Lincoln)
Dates: Tuesdays, Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 & 8
Time: 4.15 p.m. (with tea and coffee from 4.00 p.m.)
Venue: Beckington Room, Lincoln College or online via Teams (contact perry.gauci@lincoln.ox.ac.uk)
All research students working in this period are encouraged to attend; anyone else interested is very welcome.
Week 1
14th October Introductory Party (in-person event only)
Week 2
21st October Patrick Flood (New)
Scottish Diplomatists in the Age of Enlightenment: The Edinburgh Network
Week 3
28th October Jake Richards (LSE)
The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade
Week 4
4th November Mike Braddick (All Souls)
The Transformation of the Corn Milling Trade in Early Modern England, 1540–1800
Week 5
11th November No Meeting (to allow attendance at the Harmsworth Lecture at 5pm in Examination Schools, given by Eliga Gould: The Declaration of Independence and the Difficult Birth of American International Relations)
Week 6
18th November Bob Harris Panel
Three scholars will join Bob Harris to discuss his work ahead of his retirement in 2026
Week 7
25th November Joint-Session with the Irish History Seminar: Fionntán De Brún (Maynooth)
Tadhg Ó Neachtain (1671–c.1752): Jacobitism, Philosophy, and Knowledge of the World
Week 8
2nd December Sally Holloway (Warwick)
(8th week) ‘Of myself alone’: Inventing the Written Proposal of Marriage in Long Eighteenth-Century England
For information about the seminar, and news of forthcoming events, visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxford-seminar-in-mainly-British-History-1680-1850/123050627891042 We would be happy to post notices of interest to our group – contact perry.gauci@lincoln.ox.ac.uk
Convenors: Clémence Smith and Ceola Daly
Dates: Tuesdays, Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8
Time: 5.15-7.00 p.m.,
Venue: Schwarzman 10.302
Week 2
Ceola Daly: ‘“by Saint Patrick, but there he is”: A Cultural Pre-History of Andrew Scott’s Irish accent in Robert Icke’s Hamlet’
Week 4
Paul Norris: ‘All-Building Law in Measure for Measure’
Week 6
Mary Kate Guma: Title T.B.D.
Abigail Lakeland: ‘“Tis a good piece”: The Blank Canvas in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens’
Week 8
Freya Abbas: ‘Temperance as the Path to Wisdom in Anne Broadstreet's Poetry’
Nathan Walker: ‘Verbum Caro Factum Est: Lancelot Andrewes Performing the Word-as Sacrament’
Refreshments provided.
Convenors: Ted Tregear and Michal Zechariah
Dates: Thursday week 3; Friday weeks 5 & 7
Time: 4.30 p.m.
Venue: Hawkins Room, Merton College (Week 3); Schwarzman 10.424 (Weeks 5 & 7)
We are happy to announce Big Renaissance Books – a new reading group dedicated to long, important early modern works that are not often read in full (or at all). We will meet three times a term for an informal discussion as we work through these texts as a group.
As our first text, we picked Du Bartas's Divine Weeks in Josuah Sylvester's seventeenth-century translation, helpfully available online in the OUP edition edited by Susan Snyder. A retelling of the creation of the world according to Genesis that predates Milton's by almost a century, Du Bartas's epic poem had been widely read and admired before it was all but forgotten.
The reading for the first session, to be done in advance, are Days 1–3 of the First Weeke (pp. 111–205).
