Dr Rebecca Warren

Dr Rebecca Warren is an early modern historian specialising in the history of the church during the British civil wars and interregnum between 1640 - 1660. She did her Masters degree in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent, where she focused on the complex relationship between the city government of fifteenth century Canterbury and the many religious institutions that vied with the civic authorities for power. 

Her doctoral work moved into the mid-seventeenth century and focused on the experiments in ecclesiastical administration undertaken by Oliver and Richard Cromwell in the later 1650s to replace the defunct pre-civil war church. This included a detailed examination of the work of the Commissioners for the Approbation of Public Preachers - or ‘Triers’ - established in 1654 to oversee the creation of a competent and learned preaching ministry. She is now preparing a monograph on the institutional history of the church in the 1650s: The Interregnum Church in England and Wales, c.1649 - 1662. 

Before studying at Kent, Rebecca did undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Landscape Architecture at the University of Newcastle on Tyne. She maintains a strong interest in architecture, historic landscapes and the natural environment, and has an abiding interest in the development of the English state and its landscape before the Norman conquest. 

Rebecca’s research is primarily focused on the relationship between the post-reformation church and state. She is especially interested in ecclesiastical administration and the arcane workings of the early modern parish. 

Rebecca is on the Academic Advisory Panel for the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon and is a member of the Parish Studies Network at the University of Warwick. 

She has taught a wide range of topics on early modern history for the University of Kent, including modules on late medieval politics and monarchy, Oliver Cromwell, the British Civil Wars, politics, religion and culture in early and later Stuart Britain, early modern witchcraft and Tudor and Stuart gardens.