Research Interests

Research Themes

My research field is the religion and political culture of early modern England, including notions of honour, memory and reputation, and the English civil wars more specifically. I am also concerned with the interaction between the gentry and the people in the process of allegiance formation. My work hopes to break down old divisions that distance political from social history, and national from local, hoping to establish stronger integration between the politics of the parish and the politics of the state. I am currently finishing a monograph for Oxford University Press examining side changing and treachery during the English civil wars. I am interested in supervising postgraduate research into religion, politics and society in early modern England.

Current Research Projects

I am currently working on my second monograph, entitled ‘Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing sides during the English Civil Wars’. I am exploring contemporary notions of self-fashioning, honour and reputation in this investigation of military officers that changed sides during the first civil war. I have recently given a talk at the National Army Museum as part of their 'Lunchtime Lectures' series on 'Turncoats and Renegadoes: Treachery and Traitors during the English Civil Wars' which explains how Parliamentarians would switch their allegiance to the Crown and Royalists defect to the Roundheads on an amazingly frequent basis.