Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict

To find out more about individual research projects members of the Centre are involved in, please click on the links below:

• Africa, Africans, and Portuguese Knowledge Strategies, c.1415-c.1550
• Campaigning in the Crusader States
• Crusading Masculinities
• From Myth to Majesty: an historical and scientific exploration of fifteenth-century British royal genealogies from the ‘Noah’ tradition.
• Emotional Landscapes in the Early Modern period
• Fields of Force: Popular Protest, the Moral Economy and Parish Relations in Early-Nineteenth Century England
• The Gendered Origins of Racism, 1450-1730
• Leading From the Front: Command and Leadership in the British and Irish Civil Wars
• Poverty, Charity and Welfare in Early Modern Scotland
• The Wailing Woman: La Lllorona and Day of the Dead

Below is a list of current PhD students attached to the centre. Members of our team co-supervise a number of PhDs with other universities in the Midlands 4 Cities DTP. Our students regularly engage in our events programme of seminars, workshops and conferences. We also hold special postgraduate workshops aimed at MA Students and 3rd year undergraduates thinking about postgraduate study in Medieval and Early Modern topics. The Centre provides our PGRs with important opportunities to develop their research skills and to network both nationally and internationally.

Giampiero Bagni The Templars in Bologna.

Natasha Bailey (co-supervised with University of Leicester) Nahua women in the pulque trade of early colonial Mexico. M4C profile.

Matthew Bayly A human ecology of the poor law in the Lincolnshire Wolds, 1800-1860.

Luke Butler Southeast Asian Illuminated Manuscripts : A Study of the Maritime Silk Road Using Scientific Imaging and Artificial Intelligence.

Laura Charles Experiencing Love and Marriage in the East Midlands 1600-1700.

Catherine Gower Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japheth’: The production, dissemination and use of royal genealogical chronicles in the first reign of Henry VI (1422–61).

Jeffrey James Punishment in the New Poor Law workhouse, 1834-1884.

Lucy Judd Maleficium or Beneficium: Women’s ‘domestic’ knowledge-sharing culture in Early Modern Nottinghamshire.

James Kendrick What makes a JP? A character research project on JPs in

Elizabethan Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Chelsea Kilian The Emotional Experience of Friendship in Early Modern England.

Elizabeth Lowry Household textiles and the English country house 1600-1940s.

Erin Newman Were Male and Female criminals in Seventeenth Century popular and court literature, represented as either defying or complying with Religious and Gender Ideals?

Jennifer Pearce, Latin law and the Indigenous Population of the Crusader States.

Lizbeth Powell The emotional landscape of Sir Thomas Parkyns of Bunny.

Chloe Riggs Queenship in the thirteenth century Levant.

Sophie Rice Dying Well during the British Civil War.

Mark Robinson Routiers, Brabancons and Cotteraux: Mercenaries and Crusade in Southern France, 1179-1229.

Mary Rudling The experiences of the poor under the Old and New poor laws in Sussex, 1800-1860.

Amy Scott Women and separation from their children.

Maxine Spry The use of angels and angelic motifs in martyrdom treatises during the English Reformation.

Makiko Tsunoda A study of 18th to 19th-century Japanese Nanga Paintings through art historical and material analysis, with a focus on the Nanpin School.

Caroline Walton An emotional history of the nineteenth-century workhouse.

Find out everything you need to know about funding your doctoral studies – from tuition fees and loans, to studentships and external funding.

Professor Martyn Bennett - Early Modern social, political and military history, civil wars in Britain and Ireland.

Dr Amy Fuller -Early Modern Spain and Mexico, religious drama and iconography.

Dr. Kevin Gould – European Reformations, French Wars of Religion

Dr Natasha Hodgson - (Director) The Crusades, the Latin East, Medieval Gender, Masculinities Heresy, Domesday, Normans, Wars of the Roses, Medieval and Early Modern Religion and Conflict.

Professor Stephen King – Poverty and Welfare from sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

Dr Sergio Lussana - Modern American history, slavery, African-American history, antebellum South, gender, masculinity.

Dr John McCallum - Early Modern British religious history, the Scottish Reformation, poverty, charity and poor relief.

Dr Nic Morton - The history of crusading, military orders, inter-faith relations between Christianity and Islam.

Dr. Adam Simmons - African diasporas in Africa, Europe, and Asia c.400-c.1600.

Miracles Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History (proceedings from the 2019 CSRC conference) ed. Matthew Rowley and Natasha Hodgson (Routledge, 2021) forthcoming.

Religion and Conflict in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds: Identities, Communities and Authorities (proceedings from the 2017 CSRC conference) ed. Natasha Hodgson, Amy Fuller, John McCallum, Nicholas Morton (Routledge 2020).

Please see links to staff pages for details of individual publications.

Since 2017 the centre has held a biennial international conference: a three-day programme which incorporates a public lecture and workshops across Nottingham.

In 2021 this will be held online due to Covid-19:

Challenging Narratives of European Conquest and Commemoration: The Fall of Tenochtitlan, 500 Years On (12-13^th August 2021) Please visit our blog for further details.

We regularly hold research seminars and bespoke events such as one-day workshops and public lectures. Previous workshops we have supported include

• The Crusades: Borders Margins and Interfaces (2020)
• The 500^th Anniversary of Moctezuma and Cortes’ first meeting (2019)
• Charity, Welfare and Emotions in Early Modern Britain and Ireland funded by the Royal Historical Society (2019)
• The Thirty Years War – 400 years on (2018) co-funded by the British Council for Military History

The research activities of centre members have been supported by external grants from the AHRC; ESRC; Wellcome Trust; Leverhulme; the Pasold Trust; the Royal Historical Society; the Council for British Research in the Levant and the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East.

Our students work on projects in collaboration with institutions such as the British Library; the National Archives; the Ashmolean Museum; the British Museum; the Society of Antiquaries of London and Nottingham Castle Trust.

Recent Awards

Dr Adam Simmons, Leverhulme ECR Fellowship Award for Africa, Africans and Portuguese Knowledge Strategies c. 1415 – c. 1550 (2020)

Professor Steven King - Janette Harley Prize from the British Records Association (2020) for  Writing the Lives of the English Poor 1750s-1830s (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)

Editorial Roles

Family and Community History (King)

Nottingham Medieval Studies; Advances in Crusades Research; Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History (Hodgson)

Scottish History Society Publications (McCallum)

Rulers of the Latin East; The Military Religious Orders: History, Sources, Memory (Morton)

Media Activity

Please visit our blog to see our recent media activity.