Academics

Welcome

Thank you for visiting this page. I am acting Director of Studies in Theology at Keble, and Departmental Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at the Faculty of Theology.

Research Interests

Research

My research examines early modern Christianity from a variety of perspectives: literary, social, spiritual and intellectual. I have always been attracted to the misfits and the dissenting voices, and those who imagined heaven on earth in the most startling forms. In particular, I have been drawn to the utopian and visionary expressions of feminism in seventeenth-century England, and the mystics and prophets who sought to transcend confessional politics in a Europe ravaged by religious wars. Currently, I am working on a book about this ecumenical pietism in seventeenth-century Britain, arguing that mystical theology represented a critical conversation partner in the epistemological debates which shaped the British Enlightenment.

Teaching

The History and Theology of Western Christianity, 1500-1619

Calvin (Undergraduate Special Theologian Class, Michaelmas Term)

The Later English Reformation (lecture series, Hilary Term)

The Nature and Practice of Ecclesiastical History (MSt class)

Recent Publications

' "Call No Man Master Upon Earth": Mary Astell's Tory Feminism and an Unknown Correspondence' in Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 41 (Summer 2008), pp. 507-24

'The Sweet Singers of Israel: Prophecy, Blasphemy and Worship in Restoration England', in Reformation and Renaissance Review, Vol. 10 (2008), pp. 3-23

'The Universal Principle of Grace: feminism and anti-Calvinism in two seventeenth-century women writers', in Gender and History, Vol. 21 (April 2009), pp. 130-46.

Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Forthcoming

'Between the Rational and the Mystical: the Inner life of the Early English Enlightenment', in Sara Poor and Nigel Smith eds., Mysticism, Reform and the Formation of Modernity, University of Notre Dame Press

Women and Religion in Britain, 1660-1760 (ed. with Hannah Smith, Ashgate)

Jacob Boehme: An introduction to his thought and its reception over four centuries (ed. with Ariel Hessayon)

'Redcrosse and Vocation', in Ewan Fernie ed., Redcrosse: A New Poetic Liturgy for St George’s Day (Continuum)

'The Life of Angels': celibacy and renewal in the Church of England, 1660-1714' in D.S. Manning ed., The Church of England as 'Primitive Christianity Restored'? - Claims to Orthodoxy from the 1580s to the 1730s (forthcoming)