The Joyce Youings Memorial Lecture

The Centre for Early Modern Studies organises the Joyce Youings Memorial Lecture in early modern History. The lecture commemorates Professor Joyce Youings, formerly head of History at Exeter, the first female professor at the institution, and a distinguished historian of early modern Britain, who died in 2011. The lecture is an annual event, and is generously funded by Professor Youing’s nephew, Mr Peter Youings.

2023: Professor Alexandra Shepard (Glasgow), 'Who Cared? Looking After Children in Eighteenth-Century London'. Wednesday 6 December 2023, 3.30pm. Online and Streatham Court Lecture Theatre C. Sign up via Eventbrite.

2022: Professor Ronald Hutton (Bristol), 'The European Witch Hunt in World Context: Some Further Thoughts'.

2021: Professor Laura Gowing (King’s College London), 'Making Havoc: Young Women, Apprenticeship & Choices in 17th-century England'.

2020: Professor Jonathan Barry (Exeter), 'Bristol and Exeter compared: Researching Early Modern Cities'. Watch the lecture here.

2019: Professor Peter Marshall (Warwick), 'Kirk and Community in Early Modern Orkney'.

2018: Professor Lyndal Roper (Oxford), ‘Portraits of Luther, Then and Now’.

2017: Dr Peter Elmer (Exeter), ‘Murder, Magic and Witchcraft: the Politics of the Supernatural in Restoration Exeter’.

2016: Dr Todd Gray, ‘Carving out the Renaissance in Devon’.

2015: Professor Mark Stoyle (Southampton), 'The south western rebellion of 1549 revisited'.

2014: Professor Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge), ‘'Domesticating the Reformation: Material Culture, Memory and Confessional Identity in Early Modern England'.

2013: Dr John Guy (Cambridge), ‘What’s the Future of Tudor History?’