Graduate Student, English
Balliol
Thesis Title: The Virtuoso: John Aubrey and the Royal Society
About
My doctoral thesis (still in its early stages) will offer the first systematic investigation of John Aubrey’s relationship with the Royal Society, both as an institution and as a space for intellectual exchange amongst individual members. I'm particularly interested in the ways in which Aubrey's major writings -- the Monumenta Britannica, the educational tract, the county histories, the Brief Lives, etc. -- are parts of larger dialogues about, and projects for the advancement of, knowledge within both pre- and post-Baconian intellectual cultures. As well as Aubrey, I have a general interest in the intersection of antiquarianism and the New Philosophy, the Scotstarvit Circle of Neo-Latin and vernacular poets, and the pluralization of antiquity in Baroque Europe.
When I'm not in Duke Humfrey's, I can usually be found in the Balliol Chapel Choir, a Bibliophilic Society meeting, organizing social events for the Balliol MCR, or sitting in a corner somewhere, humming Wagner quietly to myself and reading A.S. Byatt.
Contact Information
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/cofk/
Balliol College
Broad Street
Oxford
OX1 3BJ
