Seminar Programmes for the Current Academic Year
Hilary 2026
Convenors: Lorna Hutson, Joe Moshenska, Bart Van Es
Dates: Tuesdays, Weeks 1, 3, 5 & 7
Time: 5.15-7.00 p.m. (except Week 3)
Venue: Merton College, TS Eliot Lecture Theatre (except Week 3)
Week 1: Tuesday 20 January – 5.15 p.m.
Lauren Working, University of York
‘Tobacco in Arcadia: Early Stuart Patronesses & Colonial Knowledge’
Week 3: Tuesday 3 February – 12.15–1.45 p.m.
Schwarzman Centre Room 10.019
Emma Smith and Bart Van Es, University of Oxford
How to Disagree: Books, Authors, and Early Modern Debates
Week 5: Tuesday 17 February – 5.15 p.m.
Karen Edwards, University of Exeter
‘The Wolves of Toleration in Early Modern Religious Controversy’
Week 7: Tuesday 3 March – 5.15 p.m.
Michal Zechariah, University of Oxford
‘“As if the dead the living should exceed”: Unfeeling in Venus and Adonis’
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 12 February); online via Teams (please email ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk)
Week 1: 22 January
Prof. Tim Harris (Brown Univ.) ‘Liberty and Slavery in Restoration England’
Quentin Skinner, ‘John Milton and the Politics of Slavery’, in his Visions of Politics: Renaissance Virtues, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), II, 286-307; Gabriel Glickman, ‘Ch. 7: “Popery,” Europe, and the Crisis of English Overseas Expansion, 1675-1688’, from his Making the Imperial Nation: Colonization, Politics and English Identity 1660-1700 (New Haven, 2023), 215-44
Week 2: 29 January
Dr James Ross (Univ. of Winchester) ‘The Early Tudor Nobility to 1529: some reflections on a problem’
T.B. Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’ in G.W. Bernard, ed., The Tudor
Nobility (Manchester, 1992), 49-110; G.W. Bernard, ‘The Tudor Nobility in Perspective’, ibid., 1-48; J. Ross, ‘The Noble Household as a Political Centre at the end of the Middle Ages’, in C.M. Woolgar, ed., The Elite Household in England 1100-1550 (Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 28, 2018), 75-92
Week 3: 5 February
Dr Leah Astbury (University of Bristol) ‘Farmyard Medicine and Agricultural Expertise in early modern Britain’
Erica Fudge, 'Farmyard Choreographies in Early Modern England' in Renaissance Posthumanism, Joseph Campana and Scott Maisano (eds) (New York, 2016), 145-66; Louise Hill Curth, 'The care of the brute beast: animals and the seventeenth-century medical marketplace', Social History of Medicine 15/3 (2002), 375-92
Week 4: 12 February (Lower Lecture Room)
Dr John Gallagher (University of Leeds) ‘Last words: migration, death, and languages in early modern London’
Keith Wrightson, Ralph Tailor’s Summer: A Scrivener, His City, and the Plague (New Haven & London, 2011); Claire Gilbert, ‘An Age of Translation: Towards a Social History of Linguistic Agents in the Early Modern World’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 21:4 (2021), 1- 23; A. D. M. van de Haar, ‘The Linguistic Coping Strategies of Three Netherlanders in England: Jan van der Noot, Lucas d’Heere, and Johannes Radermacher’, Early Modern Low Countries 5 (2021), 192–215
Week 5: 19 February
Dr Imogen Peck (University of Birmingham), 'Family Archives in England, 1650-1838: Manuscripts, Memory, and the Making of History’
Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe’, Past and Present, 230:11 (2016), 9-48; Anna Woodham, Laura King, Liz Gloyn, Vicky Crewe and Fiona Blair, ‘We Are What We Keep: The “Family Archive”, Identity, and Public/Private Heritage’, Heritage and Society, 10:3 (2017), 203-20; Elizabeth Yale, ‘The History of Archives: The State of the Discipline’, Book History, 18 (2015), 332-59
Week 6: 26 February Dr Kathleen Commons (University of Sheffield) ‘“Commerce has taught us more humanitie”? Enslaved Black people, Jewish people, and the conditional rightslessness of “infidels” in seventeenth-century England’
Holly Brewer, 'Creating a Common Law of Slavery for England and its New World Empire', Law and History Review 39:4 (2021), 765-834; Jacob Selwood, 'Jewish Immigration, Anti- Semitism and the Diversity of Early Modern London', Jewish Culture and History, 10:1 (2008), 1–22
Week 7: 5 March
First year graduate presentations
Week 8: 12 March
First year graduate presentations
Convenors: Natalia Nowakowska, Giora Sternberg, Giuseppe Marcocci, Filippo de Vivo, Howard Hotson
Dates: Tuesdays in Weeks 2, 4 & 8; Wednesday in Week 6
Time: 2.00 to 3.30 p.m (except Week 6)
Venue: Rector’s Drawing Room, Exeter College (except Week 6)
Week 2: Tuesday 27 January 2026 2.00 p.m.
‘Daily Bread: Thinking Comparatively about Food Protests, Social History, Gender, and Archival Politics’
Maartje van Gelder (Amsterdam), Chair: Filippo de Vivo
Week 4: Tuesday 10 February 2026 2.00 p.m.
‘The Case for India: Restating Eighteenth-Century Oriental Despotism from a History of Knowledge Perspective’
Stéphane Van Damme (ENS Paris/MFO), Chair: Giuseppe Marcocci
Week 6: Wednesday 25 February 2026 5.15 p.m.
Joint session with the History of War seminar. Title TBC
Please note the change in regular time and place. This seminar will take place at All Souls College at 17:15 on Wednesday 25 February.
Julia Heinemann (Antwerp), Chair: Peter Wilson
Week 8: Tuesday 10 March 2026 2.00 p.m.
Postgraduate presentations: ‘Investigations of Women’s Suicides in the County of Henneberg: 1590–1612’
This presentation examines historical sources that address suicide in the early modern period. Although the analysis is academic and contextualised, the subject matter may be upsetting or triggering for some listeners. Audience members are encouraged to prioritise their well-being and step away if needed.
Louisa Bergold, Chair: Giora Sternberg
Convenors: Marina Perkins, Rachel Hindmarsh, Wes Williams, and Georgina Walker
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: 22 January, 12.30-2.00pm, Maison française d'Oxford, salon
Gabor Gelleri, Aberystwyth University
Title: 'L’enfant en voyage à l’époque moderne : voir et être vu'
Week 3: 5 February, 12.15-1.50pm, St John's College, New Seminar Room (please note the earlier time and alternative location)
Sophie Turner, Estonian Academy of Arts
Title: forthcoming
Week 5: 19 February, 12.30-2.00pm, Maison française d'Oxford, salon - graduate symposium
Week 7: 5 March, 12.30-2.00pm, Maison française d'Oxford, salon
Jennifer Oliver, Harvard University
Title: 'Stones, Starlings, Self: Activities of Fortification in Rabelais and Montaigne'
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 1, 3, 5 & 7
Time: 4.30 p.m.
Venue: St. Edmund Hall (see events for weekly venues)
Week 1: 20 January, St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall
Caroline Callard (EHESS, Paris), ‘Sovereignty, Spirituality, and the Subsoil in the Duchy of Savoy’
Week 3: 3 February, St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall
Alexandros Hatzikiriakos (St Andrews), Title TBC
Week 5: 17 February, St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall
Melissa Calaresu (Cambridge), ‘The Romes of Thomas Jones (1742-1803)’
Week 7: 3 March, St Edmund Hall, Doctorow Hall
Monique O’Connell (Wake Forest), ‘Polyphony or Cacophony? Tumult and Order in the Political Culture of Venice’s Empire during the Italian Wars’
For details and further updates click here.
* Term card to be posted soon *
* Term card to be posted soon *
* Term card to be posted soon *
Convenors: Nicholas Cronk (St Edmund Hall) and Jacob Chatterjee (New College)
Dates: Wednesdays in Weeks 2, 4, 5, 6, & 8
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
28 Jan. John Robertson (University of Oxford and University of Cambridge)
‘Making the space to think about society – more than an Enlightenment story’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
11 Feb. At the Maison Française d’Oxford, Norham Road:
3.30pm: Stephen Leach and Stephen Hilyard (University of Wisconsin Madison)
‘“Remember a Poor Hermit”: A Reconstruction of “Rousseau's Cave”’
(including showing of short film about Rousseau’s Cave at Wootton Hall in Staffordshire). Discussion led by Jenny Mander (Newnham College, Cambridge) with tea and coffee.
5.00pm: Roundtable on Rousseau’s Politics of Taste (2024) by Jared Holley.
Discussants: Jane Cooper (All Souls College, Oxford), Holly Rowe (Lincoln College, Oxford), and Olivier Higgins (New College, Oxford).
Response: Jared Holley (University of Edinburgh).
Drinks will be served after the event.
18 Feb. Hangyul Kim (Chonnam National University)
11:00am: ‘Museums in Revolutionary France as Sites of Encouragement and Emulation’
(Online session with the Global Intellectual History Unit, Sungkyunkwan University)
25 Feb. Sarah Mortimer (Christ Church, Oxford).
‘“The Kingdom of Liberty”: the Dutch Remonstrants on Christianity and Natural Law’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
11 Mar. Felix Waldmann (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)
‘לְרִַבִּ י: John Locke, Christ Church, and the Herbarium Exercises, 1660–1665’
(New College, Lecture Room 6, 5.00 pm)
Convenors: Margaret Bent (All Souls) and Joseph W. Mason (University of Cambridge)
Dates: Thursdays, Weeks 2, 6 & 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 2: 29 January
Presenter: Kévin Roger (University of Lorraine)
Title: ‘Latin Motets and Literary Networks in the Late Middle Ages: Intertextuality, Rhetoric, and Digital Reading’
Discussants: Yolanda Plumley (University of Exeter) and Karl Kügle (Universities of Oxford and Utrecht)
Week 6: 26 February
Presenter: Andrew Kirkman (University of Birmingham)
Title: ‘Made to measure or prêt à chanter? The Court of Wilhelm IV and the Later Alamire Manuscripts’
Discussants: Thomas Schmidt (University of Manchester) and Zoe Saunders (Independent scholar)
Week 8: 12 March
Presenters: Elisabeth Giselbrecht, Louisa Hunter-Bradley and Katie McKeogh (King’s College London)
Title: ‘No two books are the same. Interactions with early printed music and the people behind them’
* Term card to be posted soon *
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: 28 January
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 4: 11 February
Methodology Workshop
Graduates working across Faculties are invited to discuss the methodologies through which they conduct their research. Additional information about this session will be circulated in due course.
Week 6: 25 Feb
Interdisciplinary Colloquium
Speakers TBC
Details of Week 8’s session TBC.
Convenors: H. Smith (St. Hilda’s); B. Harris (Worcester); P. Gauci (Lincoln)
Dates: Tuesdays, every week
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; please note Week 7 is in-person only)
All research students working in this period are encouraged to attend; anyone else interested is very welcome.
Week 1: 20 January
Jacob Chatterjee (New) ‘An Undiscovered Letter by Mary Wollstonecraft and its Significance’
Week 2: 27 January
Jessica Patterson (Cambridge) ‘Religion, History and the Idea of an Indian Constitution in the Impeachment Trial of Warren Hastings’
Week 3: 3 February
Sally Holloway (Warwick) ‘“Of myself alone”: Inventing the Written Proposal of Marriage in Long Eighteenth-Century England’
Week 4: 10 February
Leigh Shaw-Taylor (Cambridge) ‘The Industrial Revolution as a dramatic event: a review of the evidence.’
Week 5: 17 February
Thomas Wood (Independent) ‘The Death of Dragons: Faith and Fairy Tales in early eighteenth-century Taxonomy c.1665-1750’
Week 6: 24 February
Jennifer Aston (Northumbria) ‘Will someone please think of the children!’: Child Custody and Mediation in the Court for Matrimonial Causes, 1800-1923’
Week 7: 3 March
Undergraduate Thesis session. In-person session only. Two recent undergraduates will discuss the experience and findings of their thesis.
Week 8: 10 March
Sarah Grant and Oliver Cox (The V&A) ‘The Making of Marie Antoinette Style at The V&A’
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 10.424
Week 2: 27 January
Herin Han (Magdalen) – Title TBC
Chloë Olliff (St Cross) – ‘Alternative Futures: Shakespeare’s Princes in Richard III and King John’
Week 4: 10 Feb
Rohit Ghosh (Pembroke) – ‘Cobwebbed Thinking: Margaret Cavendish and the Poetics of the Spiderweb’
Week 6: 24 Feb
Emma Sibbald (Trinity) – ‘“She makes each place where she comes a Library”: Women Users of Oxbridge University Libraries, 1600–1850’
Speakers for Week 8 TBC.
Refreshments provided.
Convenors: Ted Tregear and Michal Zechariah
Dates: Thursdays, Weeks 1, 3, & 7; Monday, Week 5
Time: 5.15 p.m.
Venue: Mure Room, Merton College
You are warmly invited to Big Renaissance Books, a reading group for the long but important early modern works we all know we should read, but rarely do, or only in parts. Last term, we got started on Du Bartas’s Divine Weeks, in Josuah Sylvester’s seventeenth-century translation, helpfully available online in Susan Snyder's OUP edition.
First meeting: 5.15pm, Thursday 22 January
The readings for the first session, to be done in advance, are the first two parts of the Second Week, ‘Eden’ and ’The Imposture’.
