Staff profile

I was born in London and had my academic formation at Cambridge (BA, PhD). After a junior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Nottingham University, I spent ten years as a Curator of Historical Manuscripts at the British Library. In 2015 I left the BL and returned to academic life; from 2015 to 2018 I was a University Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Cambridge, and then continued to teach at Cambridge as an Affiliated Lecturer after this post came to an end. From 2021 to 2023 I was an Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, before moving to Durham in 2023 to take up my present post as Lecturer in Early Modern Palaeography.

Research Interests

My research interests are centred on early modern religious history, on which I have published two books: The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences (2010), and Protestant Bodies: Gesture in the English Reformation(2025). The first of these considers early modern sermons as speech acts, and argues that they should be understood as collaborative acts between preacher and audience; the second explores the role of gesture in religious worship, and proposes a new interpretation of the Protestant Reformation as a series of experiments in reshaping the body. I have continued to pursue these interests in recent and forthcoming articles on preachers and sermons, the early modern body and the history of masculinity.

More broadly, I am interested in the intersection between religious, social and cultural history. I also have a long-standing interest in the history of the book, the transmission of texts, and the formation of libraries and archives. I have published several articles on the material history of manuscripts, including ‘Burn This Letter: Preservation and Destruction in the Early Modern Archive’ (2015) and ‘The Early Modern Secretary and the Early Modern Archive’ (2018). I have also published studies of particular manuscripts, including the Cuthbert Gospel (BL Add MS 89000) and the Lyte Genealogy (BL Add MS 48343), and individual collectors, including Anne Sadleir (1585-1672), Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), James Petiver (1665-1718) and Richard Heber (1773-1833), and I am currently developing this research into a book-length study of early modern collecting.

Research Interests

• Early modern preaching
• Sensory history
• The body
• History of the book
• Manuscripts and palaeography
• Religious, social and cultural history

• My research interests are centred on early modern religious history, on which I have published two books: The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences (2010), and Protestant Bodies: Gesture in the English Reformation (2025). The first of these considers early modern sermons as speech acts, and argues that they should be understood as collaborative acts between preacher and audience; the second explores the role of gesture in religious worship, and proposes a new interpretation of the Protestant Reformation as a series of experiments in reshaping the body. I have continued to pursue these interests in recent and forthcoming articles on preachers and sermons, the early modern body and the history of masculinity.
• More broadly, I am interested in the intersection between religious, social and cultural history. I also have a long-standing interest in the history of the book, the transmission of texts, and the formation of libraries and archives. I have published several articles on the material history of manuscripts, including ‘Burn This Letter: Preservation and Destruction in the Early Modern Archive’ (2015) and ‘The Early Modern Secretary and the Early Modern Archive’ (2018). I have also published studies of particular manuscripts, including the Cuthbert Gospel (BL Add MS 89000) and the Lyte Genealogy (BL Add MS 48343), and individual collectors, including Anne Sadleir (1585-1672), Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), James Petiver (1665-1718) and Richard Heber (1773-1833), and I am currently developing this research into a book-length study of early modern collecting.
• Research Interests
• •Early modern preaching
• •Sensory history
• •The body
• •History of the book
• •Manuscripts and palaeography
• •Religious, social and cultural history

Journal Article

• Whitsunday 1606: a new sermon manuscript by Lancelot Andrewes
  
  Hunt, A. (2025). Whitsunday 1606: a new sermon manuscript by Lancelot Andrewes. The Seventeenth Century, 40(6), 863-893. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2025.2575946
• Bloody Work: Circumcision in the English Protestant Imaginary
  
  Hunt, A. (2025). Bloody Work: Circumcision in the English Protestant Imaginary. Reformation, 30(2), 185-203. https://doi.org/10.1080/13574175.2025.2561169