Dr. Jan Machielsen
Table of contents
Curriculum Vitae
- BA in Humanities and Social Sciences, University College Maastricht (2002–2005)
- MA in European History and Civilisation, Leiden University (2005–6)
- Visiting Student at Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (January–March 2006)
- MSt in Historical Research, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford (2006–7)
- DPhil in History, Oriel College, University of Oxford (2007–2011)
- Visiting Student Research Collaborator, Princeton University (January–April 2009)
- Visiting Scholar, Cornell University (March–April 2010)
- Departmental Lecturer in Early Modern European History, Balliol College, University of Oxford (2011)
- British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow/Junior Research Fellow, Balliol College, University of Oxford (2012–2013)
- Departmental Lecturer in Early Modern European History, New College, University of Oxford (2013–2015)
- Lecturer in Early Modern History, Cardiff University (2016–2019)
- Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, Cardiff University (2019–present)
- Humboldt Research Fellow, TU Dresden (2020–2021)
Current Research Project
Jan Machielsen is currently writing a book, provisionally entitled Anatomy of a Witch-Hunt: Terror in the French Basque Country, funded by the Leverhulme and Humboldt Foundations. The witch-hunt that took place in the Pays de Labourd in the early seventeenth century is both very well-known and very poorly understood because it has been seen solely through the eyes of Pierre de Lancre, one of the judges who published a lurid account of his discoveries. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents, Anatomy of a Witch-Hunt shifts our attention away from de Lancre’s obsession and reveals the true story behind France’s most deadly witch-hunt.
Jan is visiting the TU Dresden and Germany to explore ways of embedding his project within the wider history of crime and to draw on significant German historical expertise in the study of witchcraft epidemics, a subject virtually untouched in the English-language historiography.
Research Interests
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The history of early modern demonology and witchcraft more broadly
- The history of early modern Catholicism, in particular sanctity and hagiography
- The history of scholarship, in particular confessional polemics
Selected Publications
- ed., The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil (London: Routledge, 2020)
- Martin Delrio: Demonology and Scholarship in the Counter-Reformation (London/Oxford: British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2015)
- ‘The Making of a Teen Wolf: Pierre de Lancre’s Confrontation with Jean Grenier (1603–1610)’, Folklore 130/3 (2019): 237–57.
- ‘When a Female Pope Meets a Biconfessional Town: Protestantism, Catholics, and Popular Polemics in the 1630s’, Early Modern Low Countries 3/1 (2019): 1–31.