Dr Laura Sangha (she/her)

I am Associate Professor of Early Modern History, a historian of English religious cultures in the long Reformation, c. 1450-1700. I am currently Co-Investigator on the Leverhulme Project The Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790 where the project team are working with volunteers to transcribe, analyse and make freely available 25,000 wills. I am the author of Angels and Belief in England 1480-1700 (Pickering & Chatto, 2012), and I have also published on individual devotion (Historical Research, 2019) and ghost beliefs (Historical Journal, 2020), and co-edited Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (Routledge, 2016 - a 2nd edition is now in production).

I design and teach modules on Tudor and Stuart England; supernatural belief; and religion, politics and society c.1480-1700. I also contribute to survey modules on the medieval and early modern periods, on historical theory and skills, to our two core first year undergraduate modules on methodology and historiography, and to MA modules on religion, critical approaches and early modern gender. I am Co-Director of Exeter's Centre for Early Modern Studies.

I served as an elected member of Senate 2018-22, representing the College of Humanities at the senior governing forum for academic staff at the university; as Humanities Inclusion Representative 2019-21, working with a number of different groups to nuture an inclusive and supportive environment at Exeter and to promote equality on campus for staff and students; and as the History Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer 2019-22. I am member of the Decolonising History group - if you are a member of the department and would like to get involved with this work then please do get in touch.

Beyond university, I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Higher Education Academy. I am a series editor for Liverpool University Press Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Belief and Culture and I am a member of the Paper Trails editorial board for UCL Press. Paper Trails is a BOOC - Books as Open Online Content - an innovative new open access platform that allows for multi-form contributions, including peer-reviewed articles, more adaptive object/document/item profiles, research stories, and reflections on practice.

Finally, I am one of four co-contributors to the many-headed monster, a collaborative research blog on all things early modern, and I have two professional social media accounts: twitter/X: @_drsang and Bluesky: @lsangha.bsky.social.

Biography

After attending a state school I became the first generation in my family to go to university, graduating with a history degree in the early 2000s. I spent three years working outside of academia and then returned to complete an MA in early modern history, and continued on to doctoral level under the supervision of Professor Peter Marshall at the University of Warwick. I received my doctorate in 2009 and was subsequently awarded a six month Early Career Fellowship from the Institute of Advanced Studies at Warwick, held in conjunction with teaching duties. I became a Teaching Fellow at the University of Exeter in September 2010, and was appointed to a Lectureship in British History 1500-1700 in July 2012.