Background

Alexandra Walsham was born on January 4, 1966, in Hayle, Cornwall, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Bruce Taylor and Rosalie Ann Walsham.

Education

In 1987 Alexandra Walsham received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne. In 1990 she obtained a Master of Arts degree from this university. In 1995 Walsham gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

From 1993 to 1996 Alexandra Walsham was a research fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From 1996 to 2000 she worked as a lecturer at the University of Exeter, became a senior lecturer in history in 2000, and was appointed a personal chair in 2005. She served as the head of the department at Exeter between 2007 and 2010. She was appointed as a professor of modern history and a chair of the faculty of history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2010.

Her research interests fall within the field of the religious and cultural history of early modern Britain and focus on the immediate impact and long-term repercussions of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations set within their European context. She has published extensively on a range of themes, including post-Reformation Roman Catholicism; religious tolerance and intolerance between 1500 and 1700; providence, miracles and the supernatural in post-Reformation society and culture; the history of the book, the advent of printing, and the interconnections between oral, visual and written culture; religion and the landscape; the memory of the Reformation; age, ancestry and the relationship between religious and generational change.

She is the author of several books and an editor of eight volumes of essays. These include her prize-winning monographs, Providence in Early Modern England (1999), The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (2011).

She has delivered lectures and papers in many countries, including Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

Achievements

• Alexandra Walsham is best known as the author of Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England. Her work has been recognized by a number of awards and fellowships, including a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship, and visiting fellowships at the University of Melbourne and Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. In 2017 she was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Works

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• book

  • The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

    (The Reformation of the Landscape is a richly detailed and...)

    2011
  • Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England 1500-1700

    (Charitable Hatred offers a challenging new perspective on...)

    2006
  • Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain

    (The survival and revival of Roman Catholicism in post-Ref...)

    2014
  • Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England 1993
  • Providence in Early Modern England 1999

Membership

Alexandra Walsham is a member of the Ecclesiastical History Society, the Association of University Teachers, Catholic Record Society, Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge Commonwealth Society. She is the fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the British Academy, and the Australian Academy of Humanities.

Connections

Father:

Bruce Taylor Walsham

Mother:

Rosalie Ann Walsham

Supervisor:

Patrick Collinson

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2010