Research cluster in the Radical Past

Affiliated with the International Research Network on Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism (EMoDir).

We explore the genealogy and intellectual and literary impact of religious and political radicalism in Europe and the wider Atlantic world from the mid-sixteenth century until the Age of Revolution. Radicalism is an idea with a long and ambiguous history both in politics and religion.

Radical thought in the era is internationalist and the members of the Cluster are interested in the interconnectedness of revolutionary ideas - Dutch, English, American and beyond - and the complex intellectual exchange between heterodoxy and Early Enlightenment thought, as well as how to think about the history of the radical tradition beyond Eurocentric history.

Radical thought was also local. Yorkshire with its long tradition of popular protest and religious dissent, from the Pilgrimage of Grace to George Fox and the rise of the Quaker movement offers a particularly rich context for rethinking the lasting impact of dissenting groups and churches on local, national and transnational history.

The city of York (the birthplace of the Marxist historian of seventeenth century religious radicalism, Christopher Hill) and the University of York also possess strong links to the archival resources of the Borthwick Institute, with its rich Quaker and Methodist holdings, as well as the Petyt Collection, and York Minster Library’s collection of Civil War printed books and pamphlets.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries York saw the development of various significant religious, philosophical, educational and Friendly societies, and was part of an influential northern network of Dissenting thought.

We are affiliated with EMoDir, the International Research Network on Early Modern Religious Dissent and Radicalism, and offer a home for collaborative research projects, as well as a forum for conferences, workshops and talks, and a virtual space for social events.

Present and past research into the cultures of political and religious radicalism include work on Erasmus and radical hermeneutics; the German mystic Jakob Böhme; the idea of the ineffable in English and European mysticism, English puritanism from the Elizabethan period to the Civil War and beyond; English Civil War radicalism, including figures such as the Fifth Monarchist prophetess Anna Trapnel; work on the poet William Blake, and on the radical printing press in the 1790s; sermons and citizens 1789-1829; radical and philosophical societies in the north of England; and of women’s involvement in Friendly societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

PhD researcher opportunities

We aim to support early career researchers, and are looking to attract PhD researchers working on topics including (but not limited to):

Radical religion and the Atlantic World, focusing on the entangled Anglo-Dutch and French histories in the Black and Red Atlantic.
Religious heterodoxy and literary culture, ranging from devotional poetry, prophetic utterance and other forms of ‘inspired writing’ to utopian literature (including among others John Milton, Gerrard Winstanley, Anna Trapnel, John Bunyan, Roger Williams, Lucy Hutchinson, and John Eliot.
The histories and legacies of female radicals and dissenters, including Puritans, Collegiants, Quakers, and Baptists.
Eighteenth-century radical patriotism (eg in Norman Yoke discourse)
Religion and citizenship 1789-1850
Radical Orientalism, c.1790-1830
Religion and fiction in the 1840s
Radical thought and the history of slavery/Abolition, especially Black resistance
Literary history of the Haitian Revolution