Dr Bethany Marsh

Roy Foster Irish Government Senior Scholar in the History and Culture of Ireland

Hertford College

bethany.marsh@hertford.ox.ac.uk

I completed my Ph.D at the University of Nottingham in 2019, funded by Midlands3Cities (Arts and Humanities Research Council). I was supervised by Dr David Appleby (University of Nottingham), Professor Andrew Hopper (University of Leicester) and Professor Martyn Bennett (Nottingham Trent University). I moved to Oxford in October 2019 following a six-month innovation placement at the National Civil War Centre, Nottinghamshire. During this placement I helped research, design and install two exhibitions which are currently on display at the museum. As the current Irish Government Senior Scholar at Hertford College, I am currently in the process of revising my thesis, entitled ‘Distressed Protestants or Irish vagrants?’ Charity and the organisation of relief to ‘Irish’ refugees in England, 1641-1651, into a monograph.

Research

Historical refugee studies
British and Irish Civil War Studies
History of Emotions

My work examines migration and displacement in early modern Europe, with specific focus on the organisation and dispensation of relief to refugees from Ireland during the British and Irish Civil Wars (1641-1653). I pay particular attention to the local dimensions of charity and welfare in England, through examination of churchwardens’ and constables’ account books. My work has now extended into the fields of historical trauma and the history of emotions. Through examination of expressions of emotion in the 1641 Depositions, a set of first-hand accounts relating the experiences and material losses of refugees following the outbreak of the 1641 Irish rebellion, I consider the emotional dimension of conflict in the seventeenth century and explore contemporary understanding of the psychological impact of violence.

Publications

“Refugees in museums: The Mayflower and European displacement’, Social History in Museums (forthcoming, 2020).
‘“Fake news”: politics, propaganda and censorship in the British and Irish Civil Wars, 16411653’, History Today (accepted for publication in 2019).
‘The world turned upside down: exhibition at the National Civil War Centre, Newark Museum’, University of Leicester, National Civil War Centre Guidebook Contribution (2019).
‘Seventeenth Warwick Symposium on Parish Research Conference Report’, University of Warwick,Clio-online,<https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-8385?languag..., 2019.
‘A grim spectacle: the migration of “Irish” refugees in the city of London, 1641-1651’, University of Warwick, My-Parish Online, <https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/myparish/posts/refugees>, 2018.
‘“Wealthy women, bankers and cloth-workers”: the lives of the nonconformist families of Brewhouse Yard, Nottingham, 1650-1750’, East Midlands History and Heritage, 6 (2018), pp. 7-9.
‘“Lodging the Irish”: an examination of parochial charity dispensed in Nottinghamshire to refugees from Ireland, 1641-1651’, Midland History, 42 (2017), pp. 194-216.

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