Professor Steven Gunn: Everyday life and accidental death in sixteenth-century Kent
Saturday 29 April, 4.30 - 5.30pm, OS.0.01, Michael Berry lecture theatre, Old Sessions House
This talk will use evidence from coroners’ inquests to ask what people did all day in Tudor Kent. Some hazards were common wherever in England people lived: fetching water, driving carts, playing football, ringing church bells. Others reflected Kent’s landscape and economy, with its saltmarshes, oyster creeks, fruit trees and blast furnaces. We can use accidents from across the century to examine not only the characteristics of life in Kent, but also how changes in technology, religion and society affected everyday life.
Steven Gunn is Professor of Early Modern History at Merton College, Oxford. His current research concerns accidental death and everyday life in sixteenth-century England stemming from an ESRC-funded project on coroners’ inquests in Tudor times. He was published extensively on a wide range of aspects relating to Tudor government. Additionally, he writes for BBC History Magazine and History Today, contributes to radio and television programmes such as ‘Our Time’, and is a trustee of the Royal Armouries.
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