Professor Michael Braddick
B.A., Ph.D. (Cantab.)
Department of History
Professor of History
Director, Global Humanities Initiative
+44 114 222 9701
Full contact details
Department of History
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
-
I was educated at Cambridge University where I took both my B.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Before coming to Sheffield in 1990 I was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama and Assistant Professor at Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama.
I have held fellowships from the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation and a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust.
I have also held visiting scholarships at the Huntington Library, California, the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and an ARC distinguished visiting fellowship at the University of Adelaide.
I am the author of five books and around 50 chapters and articles, dealing with aspects of state formation, the English revolution and forms of political engagement and agency in early modern England, Ireland and the British Atlantic.
I am also editor or co-editor of nine essay collections, three special editions of academic journals and of an edition of seventeenth century letters.
My most recent publications are:
- The common freedom of the people: John Lilburne and the English revolution
- The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution
- God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars
- Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland (co-edited with Phil Withington)
- Suffering and Happiness in England 1550-1850: Narratives and Representations (co-edited with Jo Innes)
From 2016-19 I was director of the Sheffield Global Humanities Initiative, and was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
- Research interests
-
My research and teaching interests are in early modern state formation and political culture; popular politics; the English revolution; the early modern British Atlantic and the first stages of British imperial expansion; and early modern political economy, in particular attitudes towards the commercialisation of the grain trade.
I am currently working on the issue of political agency, and have a book in press consider the long-run history of political life on Britain from this perspective. This relates to a Leverhulme-funded interdisciplinary international network project on the ‘Comparative history of political engagement’, in which I was the Principal Investigator. I am currently involved in a number of international collaborations, including projects concerned with the comparative histories of civil war and revolution and a long-standing interest in the politics of food supply over the long-run.
- Publications
-
Books
- The Common Freedom of the People John Lilburne and the English Revolution. Oxford University Press.
- God's Fury, England's Fire: A new history of the English civil wars. London: Allen Lane.
- State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550–1700. Cambridge University Press.
Edited books
- Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland: Essays in Honour of John Walter. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.
- Suffering and happiness in England 1550-1850: narratives and representation. A collection to honour Paul Slack. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Seventeenth-century journalism in the digital age..
- The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- The experience of revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland: Essays for John Morrill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- The experience of revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- The Politics of Gesture: HIstorical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Journal articles
- Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War. The Seventeenth Century, 34(3), 406-408.
- Media History 23.2 (2017). Media History, 23(2), 151-158.
- The family way. TLS - The Times Literary Supplement, 2016-August(5915), 25.
- Wise as the Kinge. TLS - The Times Literary Supplement(5806), 25.
- Introduction: Christopher Hill'sThe World Turned Upside Down, revisited. Prose Studies, 36(3), 175-184.
- Afterword: Some Reflections on the Comparative History of Activism, Mobilization and Political Engagement. Journal of Historical Sociology.
- Phew!. TLS - The Times Literary Supplement(5717), 34.
- Introduction: The Politics of Gesture. PAST PRESENT, 9-35.
- To will the good. TLS - The Times Literary Supplement(5486), 9.
- Customs and excise: Trade, production, and consumption in England, 1640-1845.. BUS HIST REV, 78(3), 571-574.
- Harmony and the balance: An intellectual history of seventeenth-century English-economic thought.. AM HIST REV, 107(3), 933-934.
- SHORTER NOTICES. The English Historical Review, CXIII(451), 450-451.
- Uppon this instant extraordinarie occasion military mobilization in Yorkshire before and after the Armada. Huntington Library Quarterly, 61(3-4), 429-455.
- Uppon this instant extraordinarie occasion military mobilization in Yorkshire before and after the Armada. Huntington Library Quarterly, 61(3-4), 429-455.
- Resistance to the Royal-Aid-and-Further-Supply in Chester, 1664-1672: Relations between centre and locality in Restoration-England. NORTHERN HIST, 33, 108-136.
- The Letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper, 1641–1657. Camden Fifth Series, 7, 105-402.
- The Early Modern English State and the Question of Differentiation from 1550 to 1700. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38(1), 92-111.
- THE EARLY STUART CHURCH, 1603-1642 - FINCHAM,K. HISTORY, 80(260), 482-483.
- An English Military Revolution?. The Historical Journal, 36(4), 965-975.
- WAR AND GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN, 1598-1650 - FISSEL,MC, EDITOR. HIST J, 36(4), 965-975.
- THE RESTORATION NAVY AND ENGLISH FOREIGN-TRADE 1674-1688 - HORNSTEIN,SR. HIST J, 36(4), 965-975.
- THE 9-YEARS-WAR AND THE BRITISH ARMY 1688-1697 - THE OPERATIONS IN THE LOW-COUNTRIES - CHILDS,J. HIST J, 36(4), 965-975.
- SHIPS, MONEY AND POLITICS - SEAFARING AND NAVAL ENTERPRISE IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES-I - ANDREWS,KR. HIST J, 36(4), 965-975.
- POPULAR POLITICS AND PUBLIC-POLICY - THE EXCISE RIOT AT SMITHFIELD IND FEBRUARY 1647 AND ITS AFTERMATH. HIST J, 34(3), 597-626.
- State formation and social change in early modern England: A problem stated and approaches suggested∗. Social History, 16(1), 1-17.
- Andrea Finkelstein.
Harmony and the Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2000. Pp. viii, 381. $49.50. The American Historical Review.
Chapters
- The historical sociology of politics as the study of people, power, and agency, Bringing the People Back In: State Building from Below in the Nordic Countries ca. 1500-1800 (pp. 23-36).
- Case of Ship-Money (R v Hampden) (1637): Prerogatival discretion in emergency conditions In snape J & de Cogan D (Ed.), Landmark Cases in Revenue Law (pp. 27-47). Bloomsbury Publishing
- John Lilburne and political agency in revolutionary England In Braddick M & Withington P (Ed.), Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland: Essays in Honour of John Walter (pp. 223-242). Boydell Press
- The sufferings of John Lilburne In Innes J & Braddick M (Ed.), Suffering and happiness in England 1550-1850: narratives and representation. A collection to honour Paul Slack (pp. 111-126).
- Political Revolutions In Broomhall S (Ed.), Early Modern Emotions An Introduction (pp. 185-188). Routledge
- Face, légitimaté et identité partisane dans la négociation du pouvoir de l’État en Angleterre (1558-1660) In Hermant H (Ed.), Le pouvoir contourné infléchir et subvertir l'autorité à l'âge moderne (pp. 193-221).
- Public office and private benefit in early modern England In Braddick M, Garavaglia JC & Lamouroux C (Ed.), Serve the power(s), serve the State: America and Eurasia (pp. 198-221). Cambridge Scholar Press
- War and politics in England and Wales 1642-1646 In Braddick MJ (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution (pp. 96-113). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Civil war and revolution in England, Scotland and Ireland In Braddick MJ (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution (pp. 3-20). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 16 Afterword, Spoken Word and Social Practice (pp. 446-462). BRILL
- Prayer book and protestation: Anti-popery, anti-puritanism and the outbreak of the english civil war, England's Wars of Religion, Revisited (pp. 125-146).
- Preface In Braddick M & Smith D (Ed.), The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (pp. xvii-xxvi). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- England and Wales, The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture (pp. 17-30). Oxford University Press
- Prayer book and protestation: Anti-popery, anti-puritanism and the outbreak of the english civil war, England's Wars of Religion, Revisited (pp. 125-145).
- History, Liberty, Reformation and the Cause: Parliamentarian military and ideological escalation in 1643, The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (pp. 117-134). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Introduction: John Morrill and the experience of revolution In Braddick MJ & Smith DL (Ed.), The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (pp. 1-13). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Editors' Introduction (pp. 1-4). Wiley
- Introduction, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (pp. 1-9). Macmillan Education UK
- Civility and Authority, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (pp. 113-132). Macmillan Education UK
- Mobilisation, Anxiety and Creativity in England during the 1640s In Morrow J & Scott J (Ed.), Liberty, Authority, Formality: Political Ideas and Culture, 1600-1900 (pp. 175-193). Exeter: Imprint Academic.
- Administrative performance: the representation of political authority in early modern England, Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society (pp. 166-187). Cambridge University Press
- Introduction. Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination in early modern society, Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society (pp. 1-42). Cambridge University Press
- The Rise of the Fiscal State, A Companion to Stuart Britain (pp. 67-87). Blackwell Publishers Ltd
Conference proceedings papers
- Preface (pp xi-xiii)
- The Common Freedom of the People John Lilburne and the English Revolution. Oxford University Press.
- Research group
-
Research supervision
I am keen to supervise graduate students with interests in early modern state formation and political culture; popular politics; the English revolution; the early modern British Atlantic and the first stages of British imperial expansion; and early modern political economy, in particular attitudes towards the commercialisation of the grain trade. I particularly welcome applications from those interested in the social, cultural and political history of early modern England.
- Current Students
-
Secondary Supervisor
- Most recently completed students
-
- Michael Bennett - Merchant Capital and the Origins of the Barbados Sugar Boom, 1627-1671.
- Alexander Hitchman - They themselves will be the Judges what commands are lawfull': Legal pamphlets and political mobilisation in the early 1640s.
- Richard Scott - Dreams and Passions in Revolutionary England.
- James Mawdesley (second supervisor) - Clerical Politics in Lancashire and Cheshire during the Reign of Charles I, 1625-1649.
- Teaching activities
-
Undergraduate:
- HST31028 - The English People and the English revolution
- HST3306 - A Comparative History of Revolution
- HST255 - Social Crisis and Political Change in Early Modern England
- HST120 - History Workshop
- HST115 - The Disenchantment of Early Modern Europe
Postgraduate:
- HST694 - Revolutionary England, 1640-1660: Politics, Culture and Society
- Professional activities and memberships
-
- British Academy - Chair of the Higher Education Policy Development Group, Chair of the Early Modern History Section and member of the Humanities Group
- Past & Present - Editorial Board Member
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History - Series Editor
- Until recently I served as a member of the Audit Committee and Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council
I regularly serve on committees or act as peer reviewer, advisor or referee for publishers, research funders and other Universities both in the UK and internationally.
Administrative roles:
I have in the past carried out a number of major administrative roles within the Department, particularly in relation to Undergraduate Admissions (including Senior Admissions Tutor and Tutor for Mature Applications), examinations and assessment, and as Chair of Teaching Committee. In the latter capacity I took a leading role in establishing new mechanisms of Teaching Quality assurance in the Department, and subsequently led the Department's very successful response to two Audits of Teaching Quality. I was Head of Department in 2008-9 and was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities from 2009 to 2013, and Director of the Global Humanities Initiative from 2016-19.
- Public engagement
I am a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and have in the past written for BBC History and Teaching History. I have advised on a number of radio and TV programmes and regularly speak to non-academic audiences, including local literary societies, 6th form conferences and talks. I recently co-curated (with Paul Evans) a collaboration between artists and academics from a variety of science, engineering, social science and arts disciplines thinkaboutbees.org. In the autumn of 2017 curated a strand of events in Sheffield Literary Festival on the theme of radicalism http://offtheshelf.org.uk