Prof Malcolm Gaskill
| Job Title | Contact | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Professor of Early Modern History |
M dot Gaskill at uea dot ac dot uk
Tel: +44 (0)1603 59 2792 |
Arts Building 4.26 |
Biography
Before joining the School of History, Malcolm Gaskill was Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Churchill College, Cambridge. Prior to that he was a lecturer at Keele University (1993-4), Queen’s University, Belfast (1994-5), and Anglia Ruskin University (1995-9).
His research interests are in British social and cultural history, 1500–1800, particularly the history of mentalities. He has written extensively about the history of witch-beliefs and witchcraft prosecutions, and is also interested in crime and the law, and the supernatural in the twentieth century, especially spiritualism and psychical research, 1920–50. He is currently writing a short history of witchcraft, while researching a book about emotion, mentality and culture in seventeenth-century English America. His most recent work is a history of the East Anglian witch-hunt of 1645-7, Witchfinders: a Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (2005).
His undergraduate teaching comprises ‘Introduction to Early Modern Studies’ (Level 1), ‘Doing History’ (Level 1), and ‘Early Modern England: a Social History’ (Level 2). He is also running a new Level 1 module, ‘Witchcraft, Magic and Belief in Early Modern Europe’, and, with Andy Wood (from 2008), an MA module, ‘Society and Culture in Early Modern England’.
He welcomes prospective MA and PhD students interested in the social and cultural history of early modern England, especially topics related to witchcraft, deviance and mentalities.
Key Research Interests
His research interests are in British social and cultural history, 1500–1800, particularly the history of mentalities. He has written extensively about the history of witch-beliefs and witchcraft prosecutions, and is also interested in crime and the law, and the supernatural in the twentieth century, especially spiritualism and psychical research, 1920–50. He is currently writing a short history of witchcraft, while researching a book about emotion, mentality and culture in seventeenth-century English America.
Article
Gaskill, Malcolm (2008) The Pursuit of Reality: Recent research into the reality of witchcraft. Historical Journal, 51 (4). pp. 1069-1088.
Gaskill, Malcolm (2008) Witchcraft and evidence in early modern England. Past and Present, 198. pp. 33-70.
Gaskill, Malcolm (2007) Witchcraft, Politics and Memory in Seventeenth-Century England. Historical Journal, 50 (2). pp. 289-308.
Gaskill, Malcolm (2006) Time's Arrows: Context and Anachronism in the History of Mentalities. pp. 237-53.
Gaskill, Malcolm (1998) The devil in the shape of a man: witchcraft, conflict and belief in Jacobean England. Historical Research, 71 (175). pp. 142-71.
Gaskill, Malcolm (1998) Reporting murder: fiction in the archives in early modern England. Social History, 23 (1). pp. 1-30.
Gaskill, Malcolm (1996) The displacement of providence: policing and prosecution in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Continuity and Change, 11. pp. 341-74.
Gaskill, Malcolm and Meldrum, Tim (1993) '"Crime, the law, and the state": University of Essex/Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, Naples, Comparative History Summer School, 6-10 July 1992'. Social History, 18 (1). pp. 87-92.
Book Section
Gaskill, Malcolm (2009) Fear made flesh: the English witch-panic of 1645-7. In: Moral Panics, the Press and the Law in Early Modern England. Palgrave. ISBN 9780230527324
Gaskill, Malcolm (2009) Masculinity and witchcraft in seventeenth-century England. In: Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave. ISBN 9780230553293
Gaskill, Malcolm (2008) Witchcraft, emotion and imagination in the English civil war. In: Witchcraft and the Act of 1604. Brill. ISBN 9789004165281
Gaskill, Malcolm (2003) Mentalities from crime: listening to witnesses in early modern England. In: Droit et Societé en France et en Grande-Bretagne XIIe–XXe Siècles. Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 91-101. ISBN 2859444882
Gaskill, Malcolm (2002) New directions in the history of crime and the law in early modern England. In: Crime, Gender and Sexuality in Criminal Prosecutions. Greenwood Press, pp. 147-169. ISBN 0313310130
Gaskill, Malcolm (2001) Witches and Witnesses in old and New England. In: Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture. Macmillan, pp. 55-80. ISBN 0333793498
Gaskill, Malcolm (2000) Witches and witchcraft prosecutions, 1560-1660. In: Early Modern Kent 1540-1640. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, pp. 245-77. ISBN 0851155855
Gaskill, Malcolm (1996) Witchcraft in early modern Kent: stereotypes and the background to accusations. In: Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief. CUP, pp. 257-87. ISBN 0521552249
Gaskill, Malcolm (1994) Witchcraft and power in early modern England: the case of Margaret Moore. In: Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England. Routledge, pp. 125-45. ISBN 1857281411
Monograph
Gaskill, Malcolm (2005) Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tradegy. UNSPECIFIED. Harvard University Press.
Gaskill, Malcolm (2001) Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches. UNSPECIFIED. Fourth Estate.
Gaskill, Malcolm (2001) The Matthew Hopkins Trials. Scholarly Edition. Pickering and Chatto.
Gaskill, Malcolm (2000) Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England. UNSPECIFIED. CUP.
Book
Gaskill, Malcolm (2010) Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford, p. 144. ISBN 9780199236954
