Ellen Paterson

CMRS Career Development Fellow in Early Modern History

Dr Ellen Paterson is the CMRS Career Development Fellow in Early Modern History. Her role involves teaching undergraduate papers on Early Modern History alongside conducting her own research into the intersections between popular politics and economics in seventeenth-century England.

Growing up on the border between Essex and Hertfordshire, Ellen attended local state schools for GCSEs and A-Levels, before moving further afield to pursue an undergraduate degree in History at Durham University. Ellen first came to Oxford in 2018, joining Lincoln College for her Masters in Early Modern History. She received a Clarendon Fund scholarship to pursue her doctoral research on early modern petitioning, also at Lincoln College, between 2019–2022. After completing this in three years, Ellen took on her first teaching role as a Stipendiary Lecturer at Mansfield and Oriel colleges, before joining Keble as the CMRS Research Fellow in 2023. Alongside teaching papers in British and European History, Ellen is preparing her first monograph on anti-monopoly petitioning in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. She is also embarking on a new research project exploring the cultures of corporations and the ways through which lobbying and petitioning were integral to the making of Stuart economic policy. Her work, which takes her to a variety of archives, including many of London’s livery companies, aims to demonstrate the importance of economic issues and interest groups to the early modern public sphere.

Ellen has relished the opportunity to get involved in Keble’s inclusive community and can frequently be found in the SCR chatting to colleagues over a cup of coffee. As well as being a regular attendee at SCR dinners, she has also helped to organise graduate advisee high table dinners with her colleagues in History, and now sits on the SCR Food and Wine committee. She is also one of the College’s Harassment Advisors. Ellen has embraced life at Keble—its warm environment and friendly nature made her feel at home here from her very first day.