Dr Alison Knight is awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for 2017-2020, to work on a project entitled “Stranger Churches: Hate Speech and Religious Refugees in Early Modern England.”
For this project, Dr Knight explores the heated public discourse surrounding risks and responsibilities toward migrant European Protestant populations in sixteenth century England, primarily Dutch and French communities fleeing Catholic violence. She looks at the multiple modes in which England expressed both distrust of and aggression toward religious migrants, in various genres such as sermons, plays, pamphlets, and parliamentary speeches, and considers attempts to advocate for migrants’ rights, arguing for the extensive role that hate speech and advocacy played in shaping events and public opinions.
The project is based at CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) in connection with the Faculty of English.
