Pranav Jain

I am a historian of religion and politics in early modern Europe, with a special emphasis on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. I also maintain an interest in modern Europe and have occasionally written on issues of special interest to historians of the twentieth-century. 

 

My dissertation is a study of religious and political change in Britain after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It examines how the Church of England responded to the challenges thrown up by the Toleration Act of 1689, which granted freedom of worship to other denominations. Based on a vast array of print and manuscript sources from across England, Scotland, and Wales, it explains how the Church attempted to solve problems that had plagued it for close to a century and a half. In the process, it reveals an institution rejuvenated by its quest to re-assert its sway over an increasingly pluralistic society.

 

I have now begun work on a second project that examines attitudes to suicide in early modern Britain. I am interested in how religious writers and clergy of various stripes responded to the fact and prospect of voluntary death in their communities. Through this research, I aim to highlight the unexpected ways in which religious authorities dealt with what many in a deeply Christian society considered to be one of the most heinous sins.

 

I grew up in the town of Mungaoli in central India and earned my B.A. in history from the University of Chicago. After Chicago, I worked in New Delhi for a year and then proceeded to study for an MSt in British and European history at Balliol College, Oxford as an Ertegun Scholar. I have previously served as a contributing editor for the blog of the Journal of History of Ideas.