Dr Sara Read

PGCAP, FHEA

  • Senior Lecturer in English

Research groups and centres

Publications
Google Scholar

Dr Sara Read, FHEA FRHistS, is a specialist in early modern culture, literature, and medicine, with a specific focus on women’s reproductive health. She is a widely published academic author, media commentator, and a historical novelist. Sara is always interested in discussing potential PhD projects in early modern women's health and culture and in creative writing projects. 

Academic Career

  • Appointed as Senior Lecturer, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, 2021
  • Co- authored, with Dr Catie Gill, an impact case study for REF 2021
  • PGCAP (Distinction), º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, 2016
  • Visiting Lecturer, Newman University, 2014 - 2015
  • Sessional Lecturer, Birmingham City University, 2014
  • Appointed as a Lecturer at º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, 2013
  • Visiting Lecturer, University of Worcester, 2011 - 2012
  • PhD in English, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, 2010
  • MA (Distinction), Early Modern Writing, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, 2006
  • BA (First Class Honours), English, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, 2005
  • City & Guilds 7302 Certificate in Delivering Learning, 2005

Professional Responsibilities, and Fellowships

  • Fellow of the Royal Historical Society from 2019
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy from 2016
  • Post-doctoral Fellow of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 2012-13
  • Academic advisor to the National Civil War Centre in Newark, since 2017 with Dr Catie Gill. Their work helps the museum diversify their exhibitions and develop new ways of telling women’s stories using their collections. You can watch some of the work they have been doing here in a presentation about seventeenth-century birth practices and here in a video about how fake news cancelled Christmas.
  • Member of the organising committee of the Women’s Studies Group, 1558-1837, since 2013
  • AHRC funding for two years doctoral research 2007-09

Media Work

  • Regular pieces in historical periodicals in the UK and overseas. She has pieces in History Today, Discover Your Ancestors, and Who Do You Think You Are?, Family History, BBC History and Outlook India. 
  • Appearances on radio and television include BBC's Countryfile (Dec 2021) and the BBC History Extra podcast discussing childbirth in history. She is interviewed regularly on various BBC radio outlets such as Woman’s Hour (August 2024) and Free Thinking (August 2023; December 2017) about her research and is happy to receive media enquiries.

Sara’s research focus is on the cultural representation of women’s physical and spiritual health in early modern England, and in creative writing with a focus on historical fiction. She is currently writing her third novel with the working title Bold Beauty. This is a bio-fictional novel about a notorious Restoration female figure.

Her doctoral research was developed into a monograph, Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England published by Palgrave Macmillan (2013). This was followed by a co-edited an anthology of women’s writings about their bodily and spiritual health, Flesh and Spirit: An Anthology of Seventeenth-century Women’s Writing for Manchester University Press (2014). This volume included some women whose writing is anthologised and so made available to a wider audience for the first time. This includes women writing during the English Civil Wars. Her research has gone on to analyse the presentation of miscarriage and pregnancy in this era and she has published widely on this topic.

Sara has published two research-as-practise historical novels, The Gossips’ Choice(2020) which follows the life of a midwife working in 1665, her family saga, and the lives of the women she serves. It is set against the backdrop of the Great Plague of 1665 and is based on the writings of real historical figures who have informed Sara’s research over the years. A sequel, The Midwife's Truth was, set against the backdrop of the Great Fire, was published in spring 2023. 

She recently co-edited a special edition of the Women's Writing:Women's Writing about Illness and Disease (29.4) with Dr Jennifer Evans (Herts) on women and illness, and is editing a volume of A Cultural History of Blood which is to come out as part of the Bloomsbury cultural history series. Sara is editing the 'early modern' volume 1400-1700.

Sara team teaches on the core first year introductory modules, and specialises in teaching literature of the Renaissance to the Restoration. She contributes to 'Narrative Forms'  the first year core module. She co-convenes and teaches on 'The People's History: Representations of the English Civil Wars, Past and Present' and 'Love and Life in Stuart Era Literature' with Dr Catie Gill.

Sara is the module leader for the new MA module 'Writing Heritage and History' and contributes to 'Writing for Publication' and 'Writing in the Community' for the MA: Creative Writing and the Writing Industries.

Current students

  • Megan Constable, “Writing as Other: Investigating the ‘Right to Write’ in Fictional Representations of Disability with a Creative Response.” Extension year. 
  • Rai Powell, Autism and Menstruation in young adult literature, R3. 
  • Mathew Bridle, Creative Writing and Mental Health R1.

Recent students

  • Chloe Owen, completed, May 2021. “‘My dream was lengthened after life’: Sleep, Hallucinations, and the Supernatural in Early Modern Drama.” 
  • Katie Woodhouse-Skinner, completed, December 2021, “Recovering Female Adolescence in Adolescent Life Writing and Socio-Medical Discourse in England between 1660 and 1785.” 
  • Amelia Mills, completed March 2023, “Aphra Behn’s Fiction, Verse and the Art of Translation: What ‘the ‘Translatress’ created using her French sources.”