Emily Rhodes

I am a recently submitted PhD candidate in Early Modern British History. My work examines petitions submitted by English and Welsh mothers to the crown and courts from 1660 to 1720. Through these petitions, I study the social, cultural, political and legal lives of early modern mothers and how they both perceived this identity and represented it to authority figures. My work is supervised by Dr. Elizabeth Foyster and has received media interest from the Guardian and BBC Cambridgeshire.
I completed my BA in History and French with a concentration in European Studies at Grinnell College (Iowa, USA) in 2019 and my MPhil in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge in 2020. My MPhil dissertation was entitled 'Female Petitioning to Monarchs and the Criminal Process in England, 1660-1702'. This dissertation was awarded the Women's History Network's MA Dissertation Prize.
Early modern British cultural, social, gender, and legal history; petitions and petitioning; mothering, motherhood and the history of the family and kinship; poverty and the Old Poor Laws; histories of crime and mercy; history from below; language and rhetoric
Contact
Tags & Themes
Christ's College
St. Andrew's Street
Cambridge
CB2 3BU
Publications
Articles:
'Women as Child Carers: Arranging and Compensating Mothering in Early Modern Lancashire', The History of the Family (2024). This article received media coverage from the Guardian and BBC Cambridgeshire.
Blog Posts: