Dr Fiona McCall: the winding road to local history
How does a University Challenge finalist studying physics at Durham end up teaching religious and social history at Oxford?
Meet social historian Dr Fiona McCall. A specialist in sixteenth and seventeenth-century religious and social history, her research focuses on anti-clericalism, religious conflict, family and memory during and after the English Civil war and interregnum. She will teach on our online Advanced Diploma in Local History.
Fiona didn't start out as an historian, however. She followed her heart from the sciences to the humanities - a journey that students of Continuing Education will readily recognise.
'Having a father who was a geologist, and having been good at maths and science at school, I studied for a degree in physics from the University of Durham,' said Fiona, part of the Durham team which made the finals in University Challenge. 'I loved Durham but quickly decided that the subject wasn't a fit for me, and I looked around for an alternative career.'
Fiona worked in information management in industry, and as a university librarian after leaving University.
It was only years later that she refocused her attention on history, which had really been her first love. Her heroes as a teenager were Richard III (Fiona is one of the many historians inspired to study history by Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time), Prince Rupert and Disraeli.
'As a young person I lacked the confidence to choose history over the science subjects I was more obviously good at, and which seemed at that time to hold the prospect of a better career.'
Having spent her first fourteen years in Australia, she also lacked the Latin which was often an essential requirement at that time for some history courses.
Taking the plunge
Fiona took a degree in History from the Open University, then went on to completed her DPhil at Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall, 2008). Her thesis: 'Our dear mother stripp'd': The experiences of ejected clergy and their families during the English revolution.
She joined our academic staff as a part-time Departmental Lecturer in Local History in November.
Fiona is no stranger to Oxford Continuing Education. Many students will already know her as tutor on our weekly classes programme (since 2009) where she taught courses on the English Civil War, Crime and Punishment and John Aubrey.
'I'm excited to be teaching on the Advanced Diploma - and am inspired by the diverse talents of my students, who come from all around the globe,' said Fiona.
These days she always advises students to follow their heart in their choice of study, not their grades.
Writing, speaking, research, teaching
When not teaching on the Advanced Diploma, Fiona maintains a rigorous schedule of writing, research and speaking, along with teaching at other universities.
A book, Baal's Priests: the Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (Ashgate Press, 2013), chronicles the experiences of loyalist clergy and their families during this period, was commended by judges of the 2013 Samuel Pepys Prize.
The experiences of clergy in Leicestershire (a county at the heart of Civil War conflict), using parliamentary committee records in the Bodleian Library, is the focus her most recently published paper. And a forthcoming book chapter will highlight royalists' use of humour against the interregnum church and clergy.
A longer-term research project is funded by the British Academy: this looks at loyalist resistance to the religious changes of the 1640s and 1650s within individual parishes, and makes use of local quarter sessions records and churchwardens' accounts.
Additionally she is collaborator (with Professor Helen Parish, Dr Felicity Heal and Professor Ralph Houlbrooke) on a University of Oxford/University of Reading Leverhulme-funded project to produce a modern edition of Archbishop Matthew Parker's 1561 survey of the Elizabethan clergy for the Church of England Record Society.
In March 2016 she will speak on the religious context of the Civil War at the Department's day school, The English Revolution: Social History in a World Turned Upside Down, organised by Dr Jonathan Healey.
She is organising two conferences in 2016: an interdisciplinary conference to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, Shakespearian Communities (14-16 April 2016) and 'The People All Changed': Religion and Society in Britain during the 1650s (15-16 July 2016). The conferences are part of her work as part-time lecturer in early modern history at the University of Portsmouth. She previously taught sixteenth and seventeenth century history at Newman University in Birmingham and at the University of Reading.
Spare time?
In what little spare time she has, Fiona contributes to her own history blog and is keen on most things cultural, especially art, literature and music, and is looking forward to a tour of Slovakia in the summer with the University of Portsmouth choir.
Please join us in welcoming Fiona to the staff of the Department.
For more information:
Fiona McCall's Publications
Baal's Priests: the Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (Ashgate, 2013), monograph based on my thesis, was published by Ashgate in their St Andrews Studies in Reformation History series. In October 2013 this book was shortlisted for the Samuel Pepys Prize.
'Continuing civil war by other means: royalist mockery of the interregnum church', in Mark Knights, Adam Morton (eds), The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain c.1520-1820: Contestation and Construction(Boydell, forthcoming, 2016)
'Scandalous and malignant?: Settling scores against the Leicestershire clergy after the first Civil War', Midland History, 40 (2, Autumn 2015), pp. 220-242
'The Religious Settlement of Elizabeth I: 1559-1571: Did it providing a lasting solution to England's religious divisions?', Modern History Review, 17 (3, February 2015), pp. 18-22
'Children of Baal: Clergy Families and Their Memories of Sequestration',Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 76 (4, 2013), pp. 617-38
The Parker Certificates, Church of England Record Society (forthcoming)
'The King's Smuggler: Jane Whorwood, Secret Agent to Charles I',Oxoniensia, 76 (2011), p. 294 (Book Review)
Published 1 February 2016