The University of Sheffield is home to many postgraduate research students whose thesis topic and research interests engage with the early modern period broadly conceived.
The following students (alphabetised by surname) are currently pursuing doctoral research and can be contacted through SCEMS. Where possible, a link to their individual research profiles has been given.
Information about Staff and Fellows of the Centre for Early Modern Studies (including supervisors) can be found on the Staff and Fellows page.
Guide to abbrevations
AHRC: Arts and Humanities Research Council
British Library: http://www.bl.uk/
CDA: Collaborative Doctoral Award
(involving an external partner)
Leverhulme: The Leverhulme Trust
MARI: Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy
Wolfson: Wolfson Foundation
WRoCAH: White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities
| Name | Area of research |
Supervised by | Funding body |
| Carla Almanza-Galvez | Utopian travel narratives in eighteenth-century Spain | Rhian Davies (Hisp.); David McCallam (SLC) | |
| Laura Alston | ‘Negative’ emotions and emotional communities in 18th century & regency women’s private writing and culture, 1700-1830 | Karen Harvey (History) | |
| Josh Bengough-Smith | Renaissance French notions of ‘one language for one nation’: a sociolinguistic analysis of language policies and practices in sixteenth-century France | Penny Simons, Kristine Horner (SLC) |
AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Ellie Bird | Narratives of slavery in Canada | Jane Hodson (English) | British Library |
| Eleanor Bland | Policing and the identification of reoffenders in Metropolitan London, 1780-1850 | Bob Shoemaker (History) | AHRC |
| Laura Bracey | Women workers in the light and heavy metal trades in Sheffield, c.1742-1867 (with Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust) | Karen Harvey (History) | AHRC (CDA) |
| Francesca Breeden | Communal solitude: The archaeology of the Carthusian Houses of Great Britain and Ireland, 1178-1569 | Hugh Willmott (Archaeology) | WRoCAH |
| Roxanne But | The use of English cant and slang in historical texts | Susan Fitzmaurice (English) | |
| Nigel Cavanagh | Industrializing communities in South Yorkshire, 1650-1850: a case study of Elsecar | Karen Harvey (History) | British Library |
| Apurba Chatterjee | Imaging authority: a study of the visual representations of the early British Empire in Bengal, 1750-1830 | Phil Withington (History); Shearer West (History) |
University of Sheffield |
| Helen Churcher | The ‘Criminal Classes’: public and official comprehension of habitual offending in England, 1770-1870 | Bob Shoemaker (History) | |
| Jose Cree | The invention of addiction in Early Modern England | Phil Withington (History) | WRoCAH | Cultures of Consumption |
| Courtenay-Elle Crichton-Turley | Smoke and Mirrors: Using clay pipes and figurines to critique structure-from-motion 3D photographic modelling | Hugh Willmott (Archaeology) | University of Sheffield |
| Kate Davison | A social history of humour 1690-1730 | Phil Withington (History) | Wolfson |
| Val Derbyshire | Finding Charlotte: places and spaces in the life and works of Charlotte Turner Smith, 1749-1806 | Jacqueline Labbe (English) | AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Jessica Edmondes | A critical edition of the verse miscellany, MS. Harley 7392 (2) | Steve May, Cathy Shrank (English) | |
| Catherine Evans | Music and time in Early Modern Literature | Emma Rhatigan; Marcus Nevitt (English) |
AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Will Finley | Towards a digital history of printed book illustration 1750-1850 | Karen Harvey (History) | British Library |
| Tamsyn Fraser | Livestock and landscape: changing husbandry, livestock improvement and landscape enclosure in post-medieval England (with Historic England) | Umberto Albarella (Archaeology) | AHRC (CDA) | WRoCAH |
| Federico Furnari | (Musicology) | ||
| Catherine Gadsby-Mace | Representations of the British nation in eighteenth-century Gothic fiction | Angela Wright (English) | |
| Sam Garwood | Christian and Muslim interactions in the post-medieval Adriatic: an examination of cultural and economic exchange through the analysis of the glass cargoes from shipwreck assemblages | Hugh Wilmott (Archaeology) | University of Sheffield |
| Kate Gath | William Davenant and the senses in seventeenth-century literature | Marcus Nevitt (English) | Privately Funded |
| Kate Gibson | Perceptions and experiences of illegitimacy in the Long Eighteenth Century | Karen Harvey (History) | Wolfson |
| Elizabeth Goodwin | Communal experiences of reform for Women Religious in sixteenth-century England | Martial Staub (History) | AHRC |
| Liyuan Gu | History and conservation of rockwork in Chinese gardens | Jan Woudstra (Landscape History) | |
| Morgane Guinard | La Parabole du Savoir Interdit, ou les interdits philosophiques et religieux sur la connaissance en France au XVIIIe siècle | David McCallam (French) | Wolfson |
| Alex Hitchman | Popular appeal and political mobilisation: a study of legal pamphlets and the law in the early 1640s | Mike Braddick (History) | University of Sheffield |
| Alison Horgan | “Used by the Maids to light the fire”: the publication, reception and influence of Thomas Percy’s “Reliques” in an age of politeness | (English) | AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Kathleen Hudson | Servant narratives in early Gothic literature | (English) | |
| Lucy Huggins | The social and spatial worlds of Old Bailey convicts, 1785-1875 | Bob Shoemaker (History) | |
| Anna Jenkin | Perceptions of the Murderess in London and Paris: 1674-1789 | Bob Shoemaker (History) | AHRC |
| Mikolaj Lisowski | The identification of Jewish patterns of food preparation and consumption: a Zooarchaeological approach to the medieval and early modern evidence from Central-Eastern Europe | Umberto Albarella (Archaeology) | |
| Samuel Longhurst | The fireside and pastoral ‘Otium’: a study of Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, and eighteenth-century poetics | (English) | AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Ji Ma | Rhetoric, Ideology and Linguistic Practice: Untangling the Multilayer Complexities in John Hart’s Three Treatises on Orthographic Reform during the Mid-Tudor Dynasty | Richard Steadman-Jones (English) | |
| Mark McHenry | Hugh Pyper (SIIBS) | ||
| Helen Newsome | A pragmatic analysis of linguistic and political agency in the letters of Margaret and Mary Tudor | (English) | AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Ellen Nicholls | The ‘aching pleasure’ of Keats’s ‘scientific’ poetry | (English) | Wolfson | WRoCAH |
| Ayumi Nonomiya | Second-person pronouns in eighteenth-century dramas | Jane Hodson (English) | Privately Funded |
| Frances Parsons | |||
| Tony Prince | Bastardy in Shakespeare | English | |
| Tanmoy Rahman | Tim Shephard (Music) | ||
| Youcao Ren | Jan Woudstra (Landscape History) | ||
| Josepha Richard | The art and history of gardens of China | (Landscape History) | |
| Tom Rusbridge | Leather and life: objects and their actors in early modern England | Karen Harvey (History) | AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Melanie Russell | “The fashion of playmaking”: cloth references in Middleton City comedy | Tom Rutter (English) | |
| Serenella Sessini | The representation of music in Italian religious art, ca.1420-1540 | Tim Shephard (Music) | Leverhulme | MARI |
| Rosie Shute |
The printing press and its effect on fifteenth-century English
|
Susan Fitzmaurice (English) | AHRC | WRoCAH |
| Harriet Smart | “A state theatre of power”: the role of human sacrifice in the establishment of Mexica hegemony in the Valley of Mexico, 1430-1519 | Caroline Dodds Pennock (History) | University of Sheffield |
| Laura Stefanescu | Iconography of the Virgin in connection with music and Marian devotion | Tim Shephard (Music) | Leverhulme | MARI |
| Jie Tang | Landscape typologies of rural settlements along the Shandong section of the Chinese Grand Canal | Jan Woudstra (Landscape History) | |
| Alex Taylor | Venting and vending, smuggling and cultivation: the criminality of tobacco in early modern England | Phil Withington (History) | Wolfson |
| Kristine Tomlinson | The Reverend Isaiah Parker MD: extralegal, religious, and legal discipline in Harvard, Massachusetts, 1772-1812 | Simon Middleton (History) | |
| Liz Trueman | The portrait as a transgressive device in French, German and British fiction of the long 19th century | David McCallam (French) | Wolfson |
| Momoko Uchisaka | Representations of ‘madness’ in Italian theatrical performances, 1589-1643 | Tim Shephard (Music) | |
| Nicola Walker | Industrialising communities in South Yorkshire, 1650-1850: a case study of Cannon Hall | Karen Harvey (History) | |
| Hannah Wallace | Community, Conflict and Change at Chatsworth, 1700-1820 (with Chatsworth House) | Karen Harvey (History); Jane Hodson (English) |
AHRC (CDA) | WRoCAH |
| Jon Webster | The History, Development and Cultural Impact of Libraries in the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1775-1914 | Briony Birdy (Information Studies); Karen Harvey (History) | |
| Mabel Winter | Law, Reputation and Commercial Life in seventeenth-century England: the case of Thompson and Company in 1677 | Phil Withington (History) | WRoCAH |
The following Sheffield students are also active in SCEMS:
| Abigail Brown | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| Lauren Butler | PhD: A community of masters and servants? Chatsworth, 1811-1914 | 2015-2018 | English | History |
| Fiona Clapperton | PhD: The making of a modern estate: employment & service at Chatsworth in the 20th century | 2015-2018 | English | History |
| Rebecca Herd | MA French Studies (Diss: 17th-c. French female playwrights and the subversion of Classicism) | 2015-2016 | French (SLC) |
| Amy Jackson | MA English (Early Modern Pathway) | 2015-2016 | English |
| Jamie Graves | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2017 | History |
| Kaite Graybill | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| Hannah Lillis | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| TJ Luttrell | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| George Morgan-Walcroft | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| Alice O’Driscoll | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| Will Raffle | MA Early Modern History (part-time) | 2015-2017 | History |
| Aurore Sansinena | MA French Studies (Diss: Women’s performances of revolutionary politics in the French Revolution) | 2015-2016 | French (SLC) |
| Sam Smith | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| Sam Toombs | MA Early Modern History | 2015-2016 | History |
| Emily Wilsea | MA Musicology | 2015-2016 | Music |