Emma Marshall Committee Member
Emma Marshall is an historian of early modern England and completed her PhD at the University of York in 2024. Her thesis examined social experiences of illness and care among gentry families between 1630 and 1750. It was rooted in extensive and original archival research, primarily using personal correspondence to think about how such experiences were mediated through letter writing and reading. The thesis argued that responses to sickness were important constituent elements of understandings of ‘family’ in this period, and that they both influenced and were influenced by power dynamics, social obligations, and individual and group identities. It also considered how the gentry’s status as masters/mistresses and landowners shaped their healthcare interactions with sick servants, tenants, and neighbours. More broadly, Emma is interested in the intersections between social, medical, and political histories.
Emma has taught at three universities and been involved in several public engagement initiatives. She also co-chaired the postgraduate forum of York’s Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and has been a Postdoctoral Fellow of the university’s Humanities Research Centre. She recently completed a Scholarly Research Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which will be used to inform her postdoctoral work.