Natasha Bailey

since 10/2023 - Postdoctoral Fellow – Forschungszentrum Gotha/Universität Erfurt

2023: Fellowship for Enlightenment Studies – Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung (IZEA), Halle

2022-2023: Tutorial Assistant – New College, University of Oxford

2018-2022: DPhil in History – New College, University of Oxford

Early Career Scholars in the Anglo-German Enlightenment, 1700-1780

Early Career Scholars in the Anglo-German Enlightenment aims to offer a new perspective on the knowledge cultures of the early Enlightenment universities through a close study of the activities and aspirations of theology students in Oxford, Cambridge, Halle, and Göttingen. It will do so, in part, by examining how the rapid expansion of the print market; rising levels of education; and the emergence of career opportunities outside of law, medicine, and divinity (including in journalism, ‘finance’, and the empire) impacted attitudes towards the curriculum and associated models of scholarly engagement and output. It will also compare the environments of these universities to those of proximate centres of learning such as Edinburgh, Leipzig, and Jena. My project’s comparative dimension will allow me to investigate to what extent the self-fashioning tactics, ideals, and personal journeys of early career scholars diverged across geographical and linguistic boundaries. But, with its heavily archival basis, it will also bring to light underappreciated (and sometimes unknown) evidence of exchange and collaboration, underscoring that, in spite of tensions and competitive rivalries, the young scholars in question were united by their commitment to preserving the Christian basis of an expanding knowledge system.

‘The Fate of the Soul in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Oxford: An Undergraduate’s Conjectures’, History of Universities, XXXVI/2 (2023), 187-204.

‘Pedagogy from the Pulpit: John Mill’s Chapel Lectures and their Historical Setting’, St Edmund Hall Magazine (November 2022), 136-140.

‘Academic Collaboration in the Early Enlightenment: Daniel Waterland (1683–1740) and his Cambridge Tyros’, English Historical Review (forthcoming, 2023).

Bailey, N., ‘The Newtonians’, in S. Balbus and R. Wilson (eds.) Oxford’s Savilian Professors of Astronomy: The First 400 Years (OUP, forthcoming 2024).