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Dr Brodie Waddell

Positions held:
  • Reader in Early Modern History, School of Historical Studies
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I joined the department in 2012, after completing post-doctoral fellowships at York and Cambridge. My research focuses on English history from c.1550 to c.1750, especially social and economic life. I teach, supervise and research with my colleagues in early modern history at Birkbeck and beyond.

    Highlights

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Director of Education (History, Classics and Archaeology)

    Professional activities

    Editor, Cultural and Social History

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • petitions and supplications
    • writing practices among middling and labouring people
    • the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution of 1688
    • charity, welfare and the poor law
    • religious attitudes to economic issues
    • craft guilds and local government
    • land management and common resources
    • protest, riot and rebellion
    • ballads, pamphlets and other printed ‘popular culture’

    Research overview

    How did how ordinary people respond to the challenges they faced in an era of rapid social, political and economic change? This is the question at the heart of my research agenda, but the approaches that I have adopted to answer it have included a wide variety of different methods and have ranged across several centuries of English history.

    My current research focuses on the pratice of petitioning, one of the most common ways for people without official political power to push the authorities to act. This project is funded by grants from the AHRC and the Economic History Society, which has enabled me to draw on thousands of surviving petitions to local and central government from c.1570 to c.1800. It shows how these written requests and complaints became a crucial mode of communication between the ‘rulers’ and the ‘ruled’. People at all levels of society – from noblemen to paupers – used petitions to make their voices heard.

    In my other research, I have explored many more facets of early modern history, as outlined in my research interests list. While the specific topics range widely, my work has focused on England, c.1550-1750.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    • Steering Committee, Medieval and Early Modern Worlds

    Research projects

    The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England.

    Abstract

    How can people without official political power push the authorities to act? Historically, one of the most common tactics was to create a petition or supplication. In seventeenth-century England, petitioning was ubiquitous. It was one of the only acceptable ways to address the authorities when seeking redress, mercy or advancement. As a result, it was a crucial mode of communication between the ‘rulers’ and the ‘ruled’. People at all levels of society – from noblemen to paupers – used petitions to make their voices heard. Some were mere begging letters scrawled on scraps of paper; others were carefully crafted radical demands signed by thousands and sent to the highest powers in the land. Whatever form they took, they provide a vital source for illuminating the concerns of supposedly ‘powerless’ people and offer a unique means to map the structures of authority that framed early modern society.

    Funded by
    Arts and Humanities Research Council
    Funder ID code
    AH/S001654/1

    Poverty, Taxation and Regulation: Petitions to Local magistrates in Eighteenth-Century England.

    Abstract

    In eighteenth-century England, ordinary people regularly petitioned county and city magistrates about personal calamities or local problems. These requests survive in huge numbers in local archives, including nearly ten thousand for London alone. Analysing such petitions allows us to better understand social relations, economic hardship and the role of the state in this period as well as the outlook and circumstances of people who lacked any official authority of their own. Which issues drove people to complain? How did they frame their requests? How did such petitioning vary by geography, chronology, gender and social status?

    Funded by
    Economic History Society
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    8

    Current doctoral researchers

    • ERIN FETTERLY
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
    • NICOLA CLARKE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
    • SUE BJORKEGREN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      St. Giles in the Fields in the 17th Century

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • ANNA CUSACK
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      The Marginal Dead of London, c.1600-1800
      Awarded:
      2021
    • SARAH BIRT
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      A Fashionable Business: Seamstresses, Mantua-makers, and Milliners in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century London
      Awarded:
      2021
    • CHARLES TAVERNER
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Selling food in the streets of London, c. 1600-1750
      Awarded:
      2020

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Early Modern London: Society and Culture (HICL046S7)
    • Crime, Poverty and Protest in England and Beyond, 1500-1800 (SSHC350S6)
    • Research Skills for Historians (SSHC386Z7)
    • Research Skills for Historians (SSHC386Z7)
    • Exploring the Past (SSHC407S5)
    • The Early Modern World, 1500-1800: Reformations and Revolutions (SSHC413S4)
    • The Early Modern World, 1500-1800: Reformations and Revolutions (SSHC413S4)
    • To See the World in a Grain of Sand: Reading and Writing Microhistories (SSHC428S7)
    • Histories of Magic and Witchcraft in the Pre-Modern World (Level 5) (SSHC520S5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    • Waddell, Brodie (2016) Economic life. In: Sangha, L. and Willis, J. (eds.) Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources. Routledge Guides to Using Historical Sources. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 224-239. ISBN 9781138823648.
    • Waddell, Brodie (2010) Neighbours and strangers: the locality in later Stuart economic culture. In: Williamson, F. (ed.) Locating Agency: Space, Power and Popular Politics. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 103-132. ISBN 9781443814485.
  • Business and community

    Business and community

    Outreach

    Academic leader, 'Investigating the Lives of Seventeenth-Century Petitioners', U3A Shared Learning Project, 2019-20