BA, PhD, FBA, FAHA, FRHistS
I did my undergraduate degree in History with Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and from there I went to study in Germany at the University of Tubingen before moving to the University of London (King’s College) where I completed my doctorate.
I worked at Royal Holloway, University of London, for many years and then at Balliol College, Oxford, where I was Fellow and Tutor in History. On becoming Regius Professor of History I moved to Oriel College. I am the first woman to hold the Regius Chair in History. Now retired, I run graduate workshops with Kat Hill for many universities, ‘Moving History’, which integrate physical exercise into academic work and develop critical and creative thinking in an AI age.
My first book, The Holy Household. Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg argued that the Reformation developed a theology of gender. Its attraction lay in its offer of the vision of a ‘holy household’ where the roles of men and women were clearly distinct. Oedipus and the Devil, my second book, ranges through the literary culture of the sixteenth century to the use of psychoanalysis in studying witchcraft. For Witch Craze I undertook four archivally-based case studies of witch hunting in southern Germany. This book argues that what powered the witch craze was a set of fears about fertility in the human and the natural world. The study encompasses areas of human experience that often elude the historical record, realms such as fantasy, envy and terror. The Witch in the Western Imagination, (University of Virginia Press 2012) explores images of witches and witchcraft in art and literature. In 2016, I published a biography of Martin Luther, entitled Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (Bodley Head, 2016/Fischer, 2016), and in 2021, Living I was Your Plague: Martin Luther’s World and Legacy (Princeton/Klett-Cotta, 2021), a study of Luther as window onto sixteenth-century culture. My most recent book is on the German Peasants’ War, Für Die Freiheit. Der Bauernkrieg (Fischer 2024) published in English with Basic Books as Summer of Fire and Blood. The German Peasants’ War of 1525. This book won the Cundill Prize for 2025.