James Daybell

James is a Professor of Early Modern British History and Associate Dean, Research at the University of Plymouth, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has written more than 14 books on the Tudors, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history, Renaissance letters and letter-writing, early modern women, gender, power and politics, and materiality, including Women Letter Writers in Tudor England (Oxford University Press, 2006; paperback 2018), The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635 (2012), and Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe (2016). He is currently working on several monograph-length studies on glove culture and gender in early modern England; gender and the politics of archives; and the cultural history of separation.

James is Director of the AHRC-funded projects ‘Gender, Power and Materiality in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800’ and ‘Gendered Interpretations of the V&A and Vasa Museums’; as well as Director of the British Academy/Leverhulme-funded ‘Women’s Early Modern Letters Online’ in collaboration with the University of Oxford and the Bodleian Library. He is the editor of two book series: ‘Material Readings of Early Modern Culture’ (with Professor Adam Smyth, Balliol College, Oxford) and ‘Gendering the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds’. He is also co-Director of Plymouth Heritage Praxis.