York history lecturer awarded essay prize

Posted on 4 May 2017

Dr Emilie Murphy, Lecturer in Early Modern History, has been awarded the prize for the best essay published in Renaissance Studies for 2016

Dr Murphy is being presented with the 'Renaissance Studies Article Prize' for best essay published in 2016 in the journal Renaissance Studies tomorrow (Friday 5 May) at the Warburg Institute.

Her article, entitled ‘Musical self-fashioning and the “theatre of death” in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England’ discusses the way Catholic priests subverted the authority of the state at their executions by singing on the scaffold before their deaths. The essay then goes on to show how scaffold singing became part of a significant tradition within the culture of martyrdom, which is visible in multiple spaces: in seminaries in exile on the continent, when priests sang in honour of their executed compatriots, at arraignments, in prison, and even within the households of the English Catholic community.

You can read more about Dr Murphy's research on her staff profile.