Dr George Southcombe

My research has focused on two broad, overlapping areas: the history of seventeenth-century dissent, and the relationship between literature and history. In this work I have been engaged in uncovering the social depth of politics, and the importance of nonconformist print culture. In 2012 I published a three-volume edited collection of nonconformist verse. I have also produced, alongside Dr Grant Tapsell, a broader study of the late seventeenth century, which uses visual and literary materials alongside the more conventional sources of political history. In 2019 I published my monograph, The Culture of Dissent in Restoration England: ‘The Wonders of the Lord’. This was the culmination of my work on religious dissent and I am now moving on to other fields.

I wrote a piece on scepticism towards witchcraft for a collection of essays published in honour of my old supervisor, Dr Clive Holmes, in 2017. Since then I have completed a piece with my friend and colleague Dr Alexandra Gajda on the English Witchcraft Act of 1563, which will be published in English Historical Review. I am now in the process of writing a new history of English witchcraft.

I have co-supervised doctoral students working on Quaker theology, Anglo-Japanese relations and seventeenth-century reading practices and politics. My current doctoral students are working on dissenting uses of history, and early modern disordered eating.

My research interests lie within the following headings:

• cultural history
• environmental history
• gender history
• intellectual history
• political history
• religious history