The MA RSCH is an important step towards doctoral study. With two distinctly
historiographical modules on theory and method, it will equip me with valuable theoretical
insight and research skills. Having these modules offered with a distinct early modern
focus is particularly appealing. Its themes allow me to continue studying what I have
found most interesting in undergraduate study: early modern belief, popular culture,
politics and community.
Along with theoretical and methodological modules, this MA enables me to undertake a
substantial dissertation, which will provide good grounding for a longer doctoral thesis.
By combining these three elements with a taught module, the MA will help further my
knowledge of the early modern period and my awareness of its rich historiographies.
My MA dissertation will follow on naturally from my undergraduate dissertation. I am
currently writing about fire disasters in early modern English communities and am ke en
to continue working on nature and early modern 'natural disasters'. Recent work (Mauch
and Pfister eds.: 2009; Schott et. al. eds.: 2002) has acknowledged historical disaster
studies as a complex and growing area. Historians recognise the active role played by
humans in causing and mitigating 'disaster' as well as the role of culture in interpreting
both disasters' causes and effects. I intend to write my dissertation on the various
'natural disasters' that hit England in the sixteenth and seventeenth ce nturies (the 1607
Severn floods, 1580 earthquake and the many other disastrous storms and fires).
Religious, social and cultural history is at the heart of this project: there is a
substantial, and highly providential, contemporary pamphlet literature reporting and
interpreting disasters, and disasters necessitated formal and informal communal coping
strategies, such as extraordinary charitable relief. 'Natural disasters' are then a
pertinent way into uncovering experience and representation in early modern
communities. They are at once ruptures in the status quo, responses revealing
communities' priorities and values, as well as a regular feature of early modern life —
substantial fires alone affected 112 towns 147 times in sixteenth and seventeenth century
England. Work has tended to focus on continental Europe, Asia and the Americas, leaving
Britain's history of 'natural disasters' underdeveloped. This is something I am keen to
exploit and develop. Furthermore, historical studies of 'natural disasters' retain a deep
contemporary relevance.
My undergraduate dissertation is good preparation for my MA dissertation. Studying the
impacts of the social crises of dearth, enclosure and crime in 'English Communities in
Crisis, 1580-1640' has been fascinating. The complex local and national implications of
religious and political changes studied in 'Invisible Worlds: Belief and the Supernatural in
Post-Reformation Britain' and 'Politics, Literature and Ideas in Stuart England' have also
been particularly engaging. A thematic course on early modern Europe provided an
invaluable European context for many of the issues raised throughout my studies. I have
also used archival and manuscript sources, and worked alongside academics both from
Warwick and further afield in researching my dissertation and as part of a research project
(outlined above).