Publications
Renaissance Studies
Renaissance Studies is the Society’s quarterly multi-disciplinary journal, publishing articles and editions of documents covering all aspects of Renaissance history and culture. Latest Issue
SRS Book Series
This series is dedicated to the exploration of the many cultures of knowledge, learning, reading and performing in the Renaissance and Early Modern world (c.1400-c.1700).
Bulletin
The Bulletin is published twice a year and is issued free to members. It contains substantial articles relating to SRS events and reports on Society-funded projects and conferences.
SRS Book Series Interviews: Katie Bank
In this interview with authors from the Society for Renaissance Studies book series, we talk to Katie Bank and reflect on her book Knowledge Building in Early Modern English Music which was published in 2021. We discuss the music’s affective power, the John Templeton Foundation project ‘Can Beauty Save the World?‘ and the importance of…
SRS Book Series Interviews: Syrithe Pugh
In this interview with authors from the Society for Renaissance Studies book series, we talk to Syrithe Pugh and reflect on her book Euhemerism and Its Uses: The Mortal Gods which was published in 2021. We discuss the difficulties of lost texts and fragments, acrostics found in the pseudo-Virgilian Culex and the importance of reading texts…
SRS Postdoctoral Fellows 2025-2026
The Society for Renaissance Studies is pleased to announce that its 2025–2026 postdoctoral fellowships have been awarded to Nicole Maceira Cumming and Serin Quinn for projects on the humans, animals and the environment in the Scottish Reformation, and on aphrodisiacs and foodstuffs in early modern England. As always, we received an extremely high number of…
Renaissance Studies Article Prize 2025
The Renaissance Studies Article Prize 2025 has been awarded to Tim Shephard and Melany Rice for ‘Giovanni Pontano hears the Street Soundscape of Naples’ Vol. 38, No 4, pages 519-540, September 2024 DOI 10.1111/rest.12913. The judges were hugely impressed by the quality and range of the articles in the 2024 issues of Renaissance Studies and…
David Sanderson Chambers, 1934-2025
David Chambers was a loyal member of the Society for Renaissance Studies, contributed to its journal and served as its chairman. He matriculated at Wadham College Oxford in 1953 and achieved his doctorate in 1961. Encouraged by study and travel grants, he developed an interest in Italian Renaissance history and a knowledge of Italian sources….
SRS Book Series Interviews: Ovanes Akopyan
In this interview with authors from the Society for Renaissance Studies book series, we talk to Ovanes Akopyan about his forthcoming book with David Rosenthal Disaster in the Early Modern World: Examinations, Representations, Interventions, similarities between early modern and modern understandings of disaster, and how a decline in knowledge of ancient languages is shaping Renaissance…
Playhouse Lab
By Jane Rickard |
Playhouse Lab is a play-reading group, which meets regularly in the Workshop Theatre of the University of Leeds to explore early modern plays in script-in-hand performances. It is co-convened by José A. Pérez Díez and Jane Rickard, and Brett Greatley-Hirsch manages the website. Our regular readers include members of academic staff; current undergraduate and postgraduate…
Professor Natalie Zemon Davis, CC (1928-2023)
By Liesbeth Corens |
We are deeply saddened to learn that the historian Natalie Zemon Davis has died just shy of her 95th birthday. Her career spanned decades, encompassed early modern France, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean, and was never confined to or contented with the scholarly debate du jour but instead incorporated categories of analysis which…
Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons
By Anne James |
Although by 1681 Edmund Hickeringill could complain ‘that every Book-sellers Stall groans under the burthen of Sermons, Sermons’ (The Horrid Sin of Man-Catching, 1681 ‘Epistle to the Reader’), many more early modern sermons were preached than printed. Consequently, the print record tells an incomplete story of preaching in early modern Britain, one that generally favours…
GEMMS Research Assistant Opportunities in the UK and the US
By Jennifer Farooq |
The Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons (GEMMS) project is seeking two PhD students, one in the northeastern US and the other in the UK, in a related field of study (including but not limited to early modern English literature, social, political, and religious history, theology, and book history) to assist with data collection. The…
Early Modern German Shakespeare in Action: Creation Theatre’s Romio und Julieta
By Maria Shmygol |
An online roundtable hosted by the Society for Renaissance Studies on 4th May 2021 Participants: Maria Shmygol (University of Leeds), Harry McCarthy (University of Cambridge), Kareen Seidler (ex. Université de Genève), Lucy Askew (Creation Theatre), and Ryan Duncan (Creation Theatre) This event brought together scholars, translators, and theatre practitioners for a discussion of…
Religion and the Decline of Magic at Fifty
By Michelle Pfeffer, Robin Briggs, and Jan Machielsen |
Sir Keith Thomas on the fiftieth anniversary of his Religion and the Decline of Magic A speech given at All Souls College on Friday 3 September 2021 by Sir Keith Thomas reflecting on the fiftieth anniversary of his ground-breaking Religion and the Decline of Magic, introduced by Alan Macfarlane. Due to a technical difficulty…