Research

My project explores the persecution of Quakers as vagrants across the British Atlantic World in the seventeenth century. Using Quaker suffering literature as a starting point, I am examining whether this use of the vagrancy laws was a practical solution in a period of upheaval, or if there were deeper associations between religious dissent and ideas around vagrancy. By focusing on the distinctive character of local areas and their connections across the Atlantic World, my project takes both micro and global historical approaches. I am also exploring how persecuted minorities become persecutors within colonial settings, and what this connection between religious dissent and vagrancy says about tolerance and intolerance, and ideas around the body politic in the early modern period.

I am supervised by Dr Naomi Pullin and Professor Mark Knights

My project is funded by Midlands4Cities (AHRC)

Research interests:

• The Protestant Reformation
• Religious and cultural history
• History of refugees and migration
• History of persecution
• The early modern world

(she/her)

evie.nash@warwick.ac.uk