Professor Darren Oldridge
Professor of Early Modern History
Institute of Arts and Humanities
History, Politics and Sociology
email: d.oldridge@worc.ac.uk
tel: 01905 85 5302
Darren Oldridge is a specialist in sixteenth and seventeenth-century religious history. His interests include witchcraft and the Devil, the supernatural, and the religious context of the English Civil Wars. A recurring theme of his work is the rationality underpinning apparently strange beliefs: this is reflected, most recently, in the new edition of Strange Histories (Routledge: 2017). More broadly, he is interested in the relationship between poetry and film and the past.
At present he is writing a book on early modern English demonology and editing the fourth edition of The Witchcraft Reader, to be published by Routledge in 2025 and 2028 respectively.
Qualifications
- BA (Hons), History, University of Nottingham
- PhD, History, University of Warwick
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Teaching & Research
Teaching
- All aspects of the Devil in Tudor and Stuart England
- All aspects of the late Elizabethan and early Stuart Church
- The English Civil Wars
- The supernatural in early modern England
- European witch trials
Research
Currently Darren is writing a study of demonology in Tudor and Stuart England. This seeks to unite recent research on Protestant conceptions of the Devil with ideas about witchcraft in the period.
Darren is also pursuing an ongoing project on the experience of touching and reading early printed books. This has involved a series of events in which members of the public have been invited to hold and turn the pages of seventeenth-century books, and reflect on the experience.
Previously, the subjects of Darren's research have included fairy beliefs, the theological problem of evil, the religious origins of the English Civil Wars, and the Devil in the Reformation. Outside the early modern period, he has written on the nineteenth-century press and the poetry of R. S. Thomas.
Publications
Recent books
Strange Histories (Routledge: 2nd edition 2017)
The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England (Routledge: 2016)
The Devil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press: 2012)
Recent articles
Oliver Cromwell and the Devil in Worcester, Midland History, Vol. 48, No. 3, November 2023
Fairies and the Devil in Early Modern England, The Seventeenth Century, Vol. 31, No. 1, March 2016
Light from Darkness: The Problem of Evil in Early Modern England, The Seventeenth Century, Vol. 27, No. 4, December 2012
Professional Bodies
Darren has acted as a consultant on many TV and radio programmes. Recent examples include the TV series Witches: The Truth Behind the Trials (Dash Pictures), broadcast in 2024, and A Map of Hell (National Geographic Studios, 2016).
External Responsibilities
- Reader for Yale University Press, Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Historical Journal, Journal of British Studies, Sixteenth-Century Journal, and Northern Studies
- Examiner for Nottingham Trent University, the University of Gloucestershire, the University of Hertfordshire, and the University of Wolverhampton