Dr Philip WITHINGTON
Fellow since 2008
University Lecturer, History ESRC Research Fellow (2007-2010)
Email: pjw1003 "at" cam.ac.uk
Website: http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/pjw1003@cam.ac.uk
Phil Withington was born in Yorkshire, trained as a historian in Cambridge, and worked in Aberdeen and Leeds before taking up his current position in 2008. His research centres on the social and cultural history of early modern Britain and, increasingly, empire. He has published extensively on urban society and citizenship; on reading early modern authors and their texts in social context; and on early modern militarism. He also has a more general concern with inter-disciplinary approaches to the past and the relationship between language and social change. As the holder of a three-year Research Fellowship from the ESRC he is currently pursuing two particular projects. The first looks at intoxicants and intoxication as both trans-historical phenomena and, more particularly, as drivers of cultural, social, economic and political change in early modern Britain. The second considers the relationship between early modernity and the development of theories and practices of 'society' in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.