My name is Sharon Howard, and since summer 2006 I’ve been working at the University of Sheffield as Project Manager for two digital primary source projects: the Proceedings of the Central Criminal Court and Plebeian Lives 1690-1800. I came to Sheffield after several years at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where I did my PhD and subsequently held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003-06). I’ve been running an early modern resources website in one form or another since about 2000, but this blog was a more recent addition, in June 2004. (You can learn more about the website and my academic career here.)
My main research interests, apart from focusing on the early modern period (c.1500-1800), are: crime and legal history; women and gender; Welsh and British history. I’m also interested in the relations and tensions between academic and ‘popular’ history, and issues to do with the teaching of history.
My other interests include: films, including noir, Hollywood comedies of the 30s, historical films, horror; strange and intelligent sitcoms (like this or this, or this); reading, especially crime novels and historical fiction (and meetings of the two!), eighteenth-century novels, some sci-fi; music including: ska, punk, blues, funk; cooking, organic food and the fair trade movement; horses (some teenage things you never quite get over); learning Welsh, badly; shouting at the TV (it’s what happens when you live on your own); wishing I had a cat.
Email: sharon.howard@earlymodernweb.org.uk