Olivia Formby

PhD Candidate in Early Modern History
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Olivia Formby is a PhD candidate looking at infants' emotions in early modern England, working under the supervision of Professor Alexandra Walsham. She completed her master’s thesis on emotional communities of plague at the University of Queensland in 2017 and has published in Historical Research and The Seventeenth Century journals. Olivia is a Cambridge Australia Poynton International Scholar.

Olivia is interested in the intersections between religion, medicine and emotions in early modern Europe.

Key publications

Formby, Olivia. “‘Woe unto us’: Divine wrath and godly sorrow in an English plague sermon (1637).” The Seventeenth Century 37, no. 3 (2022): 351-70.

Formby, Olivia. “The emotional evidence of early modern English plague wills.” Historical Research 94, no. 266 (2021): 782-805.