About
Research
Email: angela.platt@stmarys.ac.uk
Biography
Angela Platt joined the Institute of Theology and Liberal Arts as a Liberal Arts lecturer in January 2022. She is also the Course Lead for English Literature.
Her research is interdisciplinary, with a special interest in cultural studies, particularly looking at emotions, religious belief, and gender/family identities. Her publications include work on religion and emotions, examining how denominational identity intersects with feelings. She is completing her PhD which examines the value and experience of religious and familial love through letters and literature of nineteenth century religious dissenters.
Angela’s teaching interest include eighteenth and nineteenth century research in the humanities, looking at how culture and identity are manifested in theological beliefs, literature, and historical sources.
Angela has also taught history courses at Royal Holloway, University of London on the Enlightenment, religion, and early modern culture and society. She is an editor for the journal Women’s History Today, and a member of the committee of the Ecclesiastical History Society.
Academic qualifications
Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
PhD History, Royal Holloway University (anticipated 2023)
MA Historical Research, Roehampton University, 2017
BA Family Studies, English Literature, Theology, Cornerstone University, 2009
Research
Research profile
Journal articles
‘Love Manifested as Unity and Division; Baptist Identity at Romney Street Baptist Church, 1815-1854’, Baptist Quarterly, 2020.
‘Pain as a Spiritual Barometer of Health: a sign of divine love, 1780-1850’, Studies in Church History, 2022.
Book chapters
‘Love and the Divine’ in A Cultural History of Love in the Nineteenth-Century, Forthcoming with Bloomsbury, 2023
Select conference papers
The Inner Light & Belonging: Female Ministers in the 19th century. Presented at the 'Conference on Gendered Charismas' with University of Heidelberg, March 2021.
Pain as a spiritual barometer of health: a sign of divine love, 1780-1850. Presented at the EHS Conference 'The Church in Sickness and in Health', January 2021.
'True Religion' for the Manchester Unitarians: the centrepiece of religious identity for Rational Dissenters, 1780-1850. Presented at the 'Faith in our Town' workshop, University of Manchester, 17 January 2020.
A “feeling in your soul”: The happy feelings of love in the marriages of Old Dissent, 1780-1850. Presented at the Modern Religious History seminar at IHR on 20th November 2019.
'Nothing like home' - the female duty to foreshadow eternal joy in the 18th and 19th century home. Presented at the 'Gender Religion and Power' conference, The Bedford Centre, Royal Holloway, 21 September 2019.
When spiritual calling takes precedence: women who defy institutional expectations within Old Dissent, 1780-1850. Presented at the Annual Summer Conference, Ecclesiastical Historical Society in Durham, 17 July 2019.
'Earthly' love vs. 'Godly' love - gendered notions of love and duty within dissenting marriages, 1780-1850. Presented at 'Constructions of Love and the Emotions of Intimacy' conference University of Warwick, 9 February 2019.