Who Were the Nuns?

Posted on 15 January 2011

A three-day conference, from 23rd-25th June, at Queen Mary, University of London, seeks to follow the fortunes of the post-Reformation English nuns.

Post-reformation exiles on a ship

Since September 2008, the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project team at Queen Mary has been making a comprehensive study of the membership of the English convents in exile during the period between the opening of the first English convent in Brussels to the nuns' return to England as a result of the French Revolution and associated violence. Most were enclosed convents, in theory cut off from the outside world. However in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely. As well as studying the members and their families the project is collecting data on sponsors and patrons on both sides of the Channel. The forthcoming conference, on 'Identities, organisations, and exile', brings together literary and historical scholars to trace the particular conditions of these women's exile, and their connections to post-Reformation England.