Accessibility statement

CREMS Research Associates

In addition to our teaching and emeritus staff, CREMS is home to research staff working on funded projects and to research associates, who are scholars affiliated with the Centre.

Applications are open to researchers who have some affiliation to the Centre. Please email us at with the following documents.

●    A one-page letter of application, giving details of your research interests and indicating how research associate status will be beneficial for you.
●    A short CV of no more than two pages, with full name, address, and information on where you are currently working.

Please note that we receive many requests for Research Associate status each year, and can only accept a few due to costs and administrative time.

In most cases, associate status lasts for a maximum of 2 years.

Applications are considered on a first come, first serve basis, taking into consideration the following:
●    how they fit with the Centre’s research interests
●    the benefit to the Centre in terms of research engagement and potential for collaboration

Research Associates may have the opportunity to present and give a talk in one of the Centre seminars or events. 

Current research associates

Shirley Bell (jlx536@york.ac.uk) 

Boyd Brogan (boyd.brogan@york.ac.uk)

Vittoria Forliti (vittoria.forliti@york.ac.uk)

Elisa Frei (elisa.frei@york.ac.uk) is currently Project assistant for the Digital Indipetae Database, under development by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies (IAJS), Boston College, MA. Her research interests focus on cultural history broadly and on the histories of emotions, of masculinity and family, of the relations and perceptions between East and West, and of letters (especially litterae indipetae, Jesuit petitions for the Indies). In 2017–2018 she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the IAJS; in 2015 she was a visiting student at the University of York. She holds a BA in Archival Studies, a MA in Italian Philology, a PhD in History and a diploma in Archive-keeping, Paleography and Diplomatics. She is co-editor of the eight-volume series Asia by Daniello Bartoli SJ (1608–1685). Her essays are published in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Chronica Mundi, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, Orientis Aura and others.

David Harper (david.harper@york.ac.uk)

Sian Hibbert (sian.hibbert@york.ac.uk)

Robert Hollingworth ()

Jaska Kainulainen (jk1493@york.ac.uk) received his PhD from the European University Institute (Florence). He holds the title of docent at the University of Helsinki and is a member of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History. He has taught courses on different aspects of early-modern history at the University of Helsinki. His first monograph Paolo Sarpi: A Servant of God and State was published in 2014 by Brill. He is currently completing his second monograph Early Jesuits and the Rhetorical Tradition (forthcoming with Routledge). He is also working on a new project on travel and emotions in the early-modern world. He has published articles in Journal of Jesuit Studies, Journal of Early Modern History, Hispania Sacra and European Review of History.

Anouska Lester (anouska.lester@york.ac.uk)

Lena Liapi (lena.liapi@york.ac.uk) did her first degrees at the University of Athens (BA & MA) and her PhD at the University of York.   She has taught at the University of York, the University of Aberdeen, and Leeds Beckett University. Lena now teaches in the History Department at the University of Keele, Staffordshire. Her book Roguery in Print: Crime and Culture in Early Modern London was published in August 2019 by Boydell Press. 

Jon McGovern (jon.mcgovern@york.ac.uk) received his PhD from the University of York in September 2019. His thesis was about rebellion and propaganda in Tudor England and he has published on a wide range of themes, from allegory, sermons and balladry to political and parliamentary history. Jonathan has won three national essay prizes and his work has appeared in, or has been accepted by, leading journals including Historical Research, Parliamentary History, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Huntington Library Quarterly, Northern History, The Seventeenth Century, Studies in Philology and Notes & Queries. He is presently beginning research for a monograph about sheriffs in Tudor England, while also working on an article about early modern sestinas.

Dustin M. Neighbors (dustin.neighbors@york.ac.uk) was awarded his PhD in History from the University of York in 2018. His doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Dr John Cooper, examined the portable nature of the monarchy, specifically focusing on royal spectacles, female agency, the development of sixteenth and seventeenth-century political culture. Along with teaching for the history department at the University of York, Dustin has maintained a long-standing and close relationship with the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. He served as chair of the Cabinet of Curiosities (a CREMS postgraduate forum run by and for all postgraduates) from 2015-2016. He was the first official representative of the CREMS-University of Nebraska-Lincoln Visiting Scholars Partnership in 2016.

Dustin continues his research endeavours as he develops publications and projects. He has served as Postdoctoral Research Assistant with Historic Royal Palaces undertaking research on a pilot project examining the royal progresses of Henry VIII. This research resulted in a successful AHRC Network grant application. Launched in Autumn 2019, the AHRC network project, “Henry VIII on Tour: Tudor Palaces and Royal Progresses”, is a collaboration between Historic Royal Palaces and the History department at the University of York, co-led by Dr John Cooper. Dustin remains affiliated with the project as a consultant and associate. (https://www.hrp.org.uk/about-us/research/henry-viii-on-tour-tudor-palaces-and-royal-progresses/#gs.pxa94i) Currently, Dustin serves as a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY) at the University of Copenhagen. (https://teol.ku.dk/privacy/about-privacy/) At PRIVACY, Dustin lends his expertise in the history of monarchy and court culture as a member of an interdisciplinary research team that examines notions of privacy within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dustin’s publications include an article on the performativity of female power and early modern public participation to be published with Liminalities in Summer 2020. He is co-authoring a chapter for an edited collection on zones of privacy and women’s education in early modern Britain; co-authoring an article on the influence of Electress Anna of Saxony; and developing an article on political privacy within early modern European court culture. He is finishing up his monograph, Huntresses: European Women and the Art of Hunting, 1450-1700, to be published in 2021. The monograph examines women’s use of the traditionally ‘masculine’ activity of hunting from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and its use in cultivating agency, identity, and as a means of survival.

Charlotte Newcombe (charlotte.newcombe@york.ac.uk)

Ian Prince (ip694@york.ac.uk)

Neil Tarrant (neil.tarrant@york.ac.uk) is a specialist in the intellectual and cultural history of sixteenth-century Italy, with a particular focus on the history of science and medicine. He studied in the History Department of the University of Edinburgh, the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College London and the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex. He has subsequently worked in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, the History Department at the Royal Holloway University of London, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the History Department at the University of York.

Irina Tautschnig (irina.tautschnig@york.ac.uk)

Hannah Thomas (hjht501@york.ac.uk) PhD (Swansea University) is Special Collections Manager and Research Fellow at the Bar Convent, York, the oldest convent in England. Her PhD, which analysed the Welsh Jesuit missionary library of the College of St. Francis Xavier, is being prepared for publication. She is the author of The Secret Cemetery: A Guide to the Burial Ground of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre (2017) and Jesuit Intellectual and Physical exchange between England and Mainland Europe, co-edited with James Kelly; several articles on Jesuit book history; and a historiographical survey of the Jesuit English Province for Jesuit Historiography Online. Her research interests include Welsh Catholicism in the post-Reformation era; and Catholic uses of libraries.

Emanuela Vai (ev587@york.ac.uk) received her PhD in Art History from the University of St Andrews and the University of Turin. Her research is centred on art history and musicology from the 15th-17th centuries and primarily concentrates on the performative, material and aural dimensions of architectural spaces in Renaissance Italy, including liturgy and the iconography of spaces and their ceremonies. Her research has been funded by the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Society for Italian Studies, the Royal Historical Society, the F&M Caligara Foundation for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Catholic University Centre in Rome and the University of St Andrews. She is currently undertaking an analysis of Salomon de Caus' De Vitruve (c. 1622-1624), a rare and unpublished manuscript commentary on the first book of Jean Martin's French translation of Vitruvius. This is part of her larger project that aims to bridge the art-science divide, focusing on the relationship between music, materiality and architecture in de Caus’ manuscripts, printed books, drawings and theories.

Susan Vincent (susan.vincent@york.ac.uk) was awarded her PhD by York, on the cultural history of dress in Early Modern England, and has now expanded her research interests to include dress practices up to the present day. Currently she is working as the General Editor for a dress series forthcoming from Berg, and as a part of this is authoring a volume on Hair.  Her two previous books are Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (2003) and The Anatomy of Fashion: Dressing the Body from the Renaissance to Today (2009).

Anna Wall (anna.wall@york.ac.uk)

Koji Yamamoto (ky751@york.ac.uk) is a historian of early modern England. He spent twelve happy years in the UK, taking master's and doctoral degrees at the Department of History at York, and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at universities in London (King's College London), St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Cambridge. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow between 2012 and 2014. From April 2016, he has been based in Tokyo, Japan, and is currently an Associate Professor in Business History at the Faculty of Economics, the University of Tokyo. His first monograph is Taming Capitalism before its Triumph: Public Service, Distrust and 'Projecting' in Early Modern England (OUP, 2018). With the religious historian Peter Lake (Vanderbilt), Koji is finishing a volume of essays entitled Puritans, Papists and Projectors: Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England (Manchester UP). His next book project revisits the South Sea Bubble of 1720 as a culmination of England's culture of projecting.