Early Modern Multiculturalism

Last year I completed my master's degree in Medieval and Renaissance English. I wrote a minor thesis on the representation of the Dutch on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage and in early modern travel writing. I had always been interested in notions of early modern multiculturalism and the xenophobia and stereotypical notions that it generates. Early modern England was very much a multicultural society with the presence of sizeable Dutch merchant, stranger, and Protestant refugee communities (among other nationalities), communities that comprised as much as twelve percent of London’s population at the beginning of Mary I’s reign and between five and ten percent during Elizabeth I’s reign.

In brief my research is focusing on analysing the cultural exchanges that took place during this period!