Susan Brigden | |
---|---|
Born | Susan Elizabeth Brigden 26 June 1951 |
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Historian and academic |
Awards | Wolfson History Prize |
Academic background | |
Alma mater |
University of Manchester (BA) Clare College, Cambridge (PhD) |
Thesis | The early Reformation in London, 1520-1547: the conflict in the parishes (1979) |
Doctoral advisor | Geoffrey Elton |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History |
Sub-discipline | |
Institutions | |
Notable works | Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest |
Susan Elizabeth Brigden FRHistS FBA (born 26 June 1951) [1] is a historian and academic specialising in the English Renaissance and Reformation. She was Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College, before retiring at the end of 2016. [2]
Brigden was educated at the University of Manchester (BA) and Clare College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a PhD in 1979. Her doctoral supervisor was the eminent Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton, and her thesis was titled 'The early Reformation in London, 1520-1547: the conflict in the parishes'. [3]
She stated that her interest in Tudor history was "rather accidental". She missed out on her first choice special subject at the University of Manchester and was instead allocated to a paper on the Reformation taught by Christopher Haigh. Her interest in the period grew from there and she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the Pilgrimage of Grace. [4]
In 1980, Brigden was elected a Fellow in history at Lincoln College, Oxford. This made her the first female fellow of that college. Prior to arriving at Lincoln she taught at Newcastle University and Durham University. [2] In 1984, she became a university lecturer in the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. [5] She later became Reader in Early Modern History. [6] At Lincoln College, in addition to her duties as Fellow and tutor, she was the College's Tutor for Women. [7]
Among Brigden's former doctoral students are Alexandra Gajda of Jesus College, Oxford [8] and Lucy Wooding, who succeeded Brigden as Lincoln College's early modern history tutor in 2016. [9]
Brigden won the Wolfson History Prize in 2013 for her book Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest. [10] In 2014 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [11] She is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). [12]