Our research projects

The project

This project will develop a ground-breaking database with biographies of all medical practitioners active in England, Wales and Ireland c1500–1715, which will then be used to produce the first all-round study of the nature and impact of medical practice in early modern Britain, to be published as a major monograph by a leading university press.

The database will build on a prototype already created by Dr Peter Elmer, a senior researcher on the project (which already includes much of the necessary coverage for England, and some material for Wales and Ireland), to which will be added information from existing databases of other scholars, notably Dr Margaret Pelling, and from family and local history groups. Research assistants with expertise in Welsh and Irish sources/languages will be employed to ensure full coverage of those countries.

The database (hosted initially by the Centre for Medical History (CMH) at Exeter) will be developed as a permanent online resource, linked to other existing online resources, with the facility for others to add to the database under controlled arrangements. The project researchers, together with other CMH staff (directed by Professor Barry), will analyse the data on medical practitioners to produce the first comprehensive analysis of early modern British medical practitioners. This will explore not only their education, career patterns and medical activities, but also their major contribution to science, the arts, business, religious and political thought, revealing the key contribution of medical practitioners to the revolutionary changes in Britain's place in the world.

Research questions

• What, when and where were the major changes in the character and scope of medical practice in England, Wales and Ireland (hereafter EWI) 1500–1715?
• What was the changing relationship between supply and demand in the provision of medical care by medical practitioners over the period?
• How did the education and career patterns of medical practitioners vary, both over time and between types of community (including the three countries, regional and urban/rural differences), and how far did these reflect the traditional divisions of medicine (physic, surgery and pharmacy)?
• What were the broader roles and impacts of medical practitioners within their communities, notably in intellectual, cultural and ideological developments and in causing socio-economic changes?

The Team

• Professor Jonathan Barry – Principal Investigator
• Dr Peter Elmer – Senior Research Fellow
• Dr Alun Withey – Associate Research Fellow
• Dr Justin Colson – Associate Research Fellow
• Dr John Cunningham – Associate Research Fellow

For more information on the project, please contact Professor Barry, or visit our project website

Professor Andrew McRae is currently working on the Stuart Successions project, which aims to revitalise debates about political literature and values across the Stuart era by focussing on writing produced at moments of succession. This project will culminate in the creation of an online database cataloguing the field of succession literature and generating a range of editorial and analytical work. The project team includes Dr Paulina Kewes (Co-Investigator, University of Oxford), Dr John West (Associate Research Fellow) and Anna-Marie Linnell (PhD student).

For more information about the Stuart Successions project, please visit the project website.

Professor Henry French is part of a team of historians and archaeologists working on the AHRC-funded 'Community and Landscape' project, running from 2010-2012. The project investigates the gardens, deer park and wider historic landscape of Politmore House and will establish practices for engaging local people, schools and societies in presenting landscape heritage, while promoting community 'ownership' of research.

More information on Poltimore House and the project can be found at the Poltimore Landscapes website.

Professor Malcolm Cook is the Director of the project to prepare a critical edition of the correspondence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (online edition to be published by the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford). This project is funded by the AHRC, the British Academy and the MHRA. The Correspondence is being published by the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford and will form part of the Electronic Enlightenment project, to be distributed worldwide by Oxford University Press.

'Staging Exeter' is a RCUK Catalyst-funded project run by postgraduate students Anna-Marie Linnell, Nora Williams, and Callan Davies. Working with local amateur dramatic groups, it looks back to early modern dramatic performances in various spaces across Exeter. The project asks what they meant at the time and how modern actors and audiences embedded in the same spaces can shape our understanding of medieval and Renaissance drama.

Dr Todd Gray MBE directs the West Country Late Medieval Bench Ends project which aims to reduce the unnecessary destruction of this ancient woodwork.

This project is the first in-depth study of this collection of carvings on the ends of seats. The region has, with its more than 5,000 Bench Ends, one of the two great national collections of such woodwork. The outcome will take the form of a gazetteer of all ancient 'Ends’ in the six counties of the South West (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire). Each of the more than 300 churches has a description which provides a historical summary as well as a physical description of the Ends. At least one visit has been made to each church and the descriptions are written from printed and documentary searches in archives and libraries across the region. Parish entries will be sent in electronic form to every churchwarden and it is planned that the gazetteer will be published as six distinct county volumes. Comparative carvings in Yorkshire, the Midlands and East Anglia have also been examined.

The project will alert churchwardens to their guardianship of medieval Ends. Although many are in churches where it is readily apparent that they are medieval, in many other instances churches have only a handful of early carving which is disguised amongst much later woodwork. There is an urgent need for this project because of the current vogue for re-ordering, that is re-seating, in our ancient churches. Woodwork has been lost through the lack of appreciation for what it is. It is hoped that the project will provide information which will allow informed decisions to take place on the future of any such Bench End.

The project has revealed local distinctions, not only within counties but across the region, in carving in both Gothic and Renaissance styles. It has also demonstrated how the West Country compares to similar carving across England. It has shown how only in the West Country were benches carved with elaborate borders and how many carvings were, again nearly uniquely within England, designed on raised shields. The project also has revealed that the South West is the national centre for Renaissance carving on Ends and that it is the only part of England where symbols of the crucifixion were commonly carved on seats.

Many carvings have what are probably unexpectedly vigorous and exuberant carving and take the form of hybrid creatures, sacred subjects, initials and heraldry, and village art. Their importance to our understanding of the social and cultural history of England from the late 1400s to the early 1600s lies partly in the importance of seating to local communities. At this time every man, woman or child sat in a designated seat (which reflected their hierarchial status) and, under threat of a fine, was obliged to weekly attend their local parish church.

The project follows on from Dr Gray’s Devon’s Ancient Bench Ends which was published, with the support of English Heritage, in 2013.

The project is funded by The Pilgrim Trust and has worked closely with English Heritage.

‘Women’s Work in Rural England, 1500-1700: A New Methodological Approach’ is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and based at the University of Exeter. The project started in January 2015 and will run until the summer of 2018.

The research team comprises Professor Jane Whittle (the Principal Investigator) and Dr Mark Hailwood (Research Fellow), who will be joined by a PhD student. Together Jane and Mark are investigating women’s work activities in early modern England using incidental evidence from church court depositions, quarter sessions examinations, and coroners’ rolls. The PhD student will investigate women’s waged work through the detailed study of household accounts. The focus is on the South West of England, and the team are using records relating to Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire.

Mark and Jane will be blogging about their progress on their Project website, where they will also be posting conference papers, interesting archival finds, and information about events and publications related to the project.

Dr Felicity Henderson (English) is a co-investigator on this AHRC-funded research project, running from 2015-2019.

About

How and when did science become visual? How did drawings, diagrams and charts come to be used alongside words and objects by a group of people who hoped to reform and establish a new form of knowledge of nature, based on collaboration, experimentation and observation in the second half of the century? Who made those drawings and diagrams, and what made them ‘scientific’?  The aim of this project is to understand the roles visual resources and practices played in the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge in the first fifty years of the Royal Society. As one of the earliest institutions dedicated to collective investigation of nature, the Royal Society had few precedents to follow, and faced challenges in forming and presenting a new kind of collaborative knowledge to its audience. Many of the publications sponsored by the Royal Society such as Robert Hooke’s Micrographia or Francis Willughby’s Historia piscium, as well as the institution’s journal, 'Philosophical Transactions', contained extensive illustrations. These were important projects, as the Society grappled with various strategies to present a new form of knowledge and establish its own authority in scientific matters.  The archives of the Society contain a rich variety of images that has not yet received much attention by historians of science. This project proposes to undertake a systematic investigation into the visual and graphic practices of the Royal Society during its first fifty years, and examine the roles the Society played in the emergence of a scientific visual culture in the early modern period.

Professor Fabrizio Nevola's collaboration with digital partners in the creation of a mobile phone app

Hidden Florence is a collaboration with industry-leaders in GPS-triggered city audio tours Calvium Ltd, to create an idiosyncratic guide to Renaissance Florence in the form of a mobile phone App, published in August 2014. The app and website were written by Fabrizio Nevola and David Rosenthal in conjunction with Calvium Ltd.

The Hidden Florence free smartphone app takes you on a unique tour of the Renaissance city through the eyes of a “contemporary” guide, a 1490s wool worker called Giovanni. Following in Giovanni’s footsteps allows the visitor to engage imaginatively with Renaissance Florence as a lived experience, while going to places that most tourist guides tend to neglect.

With the app, you can navigate the streets of Florence in a novel way, using both a modern and a superbly detailed period map to hunt for statues, shrines, piazzas and palaces. As you do this, Giovanni tells you vivid tales about his neighbourhood and the city centre. He also airs his views on everything from city politics to the taverns he plays dice in, and on everyone from Lorenzo de’ Medici to the apothecary on the street corner.

You can also enjoy Hidden Florence without a smartphone and without being in Florence - find out more on the project website.