Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)

I am a historian of early modern Britain, specialising in gender and emotion.

My doctoral work explored the experience of being suicidal in early modern Britain. My first monograph, based on this project, will be published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2026. My work has been published with Cultural and Social History and Gender & History. 

My current project investigates the role of masculinity and emotion in the commision of crime in England, 1650-1900. I am interested in how ideas about the appropriate expression of gender, particularly in relation to emotion, shaped the behaviour and self-fashioning of criminal men in the early modern period. More broadly, I am concerned with the experience of men within the English legal system, and the ways in which ideas about male criminality shaped the development of justice.

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Advance HE Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence winner.

Biography

I completed my PhD at the University of Warwick in 2024, supervised by Professor Peter Marshall and Dr Naomi Pullin. During my PhD I spent two months as a Visiting Fellow at Technische Universität Dresden. Following my doctoral work I was a John Rylands Libary Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester. I have also worked with the ESRC at the University of Warwick. I joined Exeter in 2025 as lecturer in early modern history.