Email: mjs@soton.ac.uk
Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF (View in Google Maps)
I grew up in rural mid-Devon, and, after leaving school, worked for a time as a field archaeologist in Exeter. I studied for my undergraduate degree in History at the University of Southampton, and for my DPhil at the University of Oxford. I then went on to hold a Scouloudi Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research in London and a British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Exeter before being appointed to my present post at Southampton. I specialise in early modern British history, with particular research interests in the British crisis of the 1640s; witchcraft; urban society; and Tudor rebellions. I have written many scholarly articles and eight monographs, including The Black Legend of Prince Rupert’s Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War (University of Exeter Press, 2011); Water in the City: The Aqueducts and Underground Passages of Exeter (University of Exeter Press, 2014); and A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549 (forthcoming with Yale University Press, 2022). I am currently one of the co-investigators on the major AHRC-funded research project, ‘Conflict, Welfare and Memory: Maimed Soldiers and War Widows of the English Civil Wars, 1642-1700’. I have served on the Council of the Royal Historical Society, on the advisory board of the Victoria County History and on the editorial advisory panel of BBC History Magazine. I have also appeared on more than 50 radio and TV programmes, including: ‘The World at One’; ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’; ‘The Long View’ and ‘Making History’.