Dr Mark Dawson

MA (Hons) Auckland PhD Cambridge.
Senior Lecturer
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Areas of expertise

  • British History 210305
  • North American History 210312
  • European History (Excl. British, Classical Greek And Roman) 210307

Research interests

Early modern Britain and the Anglo–Atlantic world, including social inequality; the body, health, and medicine; seventeenth-century English drama and literature.

Biography

Mark Dawson was born in Christchurch (Aotearoa/New Zealand) toward the end of last century. Completing undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Auckland, he was awarded a Prince of Wales Cambridge Commonwealth Trust scholarship for doctoral study in the U.K. He was a student at Cambridge’s youngest college, Wolfson, and spent three hectic years dividing his time between the History and English Faculties. He was awarded the History Faculty’s Members’ prize for work on that famous early modern Cantabrigian, Samuel Pepys. He joined the ANU as associate lecturer in 2005.

Researcher's projects

“Living with Smallpox in Early Modern Britain, c.1580–1780”

Australian Research Council DP230100204

This project will examine how people’s experiences of and responses to infection were influenced by their social status, gender, and ethnicity. It will also consider the social, cultural, and political implications of living with smallpox in the period before vaccination’s introduction.

 

Current student projects

Goldthorpe, F., ‘British Women of the Portocracy: Port Wine Dinastias, Family and Transcultural Lives, 1678–1807’ (PhD)

Paterson, A., 'Tobacco as a Catalyst for Socio-Cultural Change in England, c.1570–1720' (MPhil)

Past student projects

Dempsey, S.W., 'Historia Successorum Regum Britanniæ: A Study in Medieval and Early Modern English Historico-Legal Argument' (PhD, 2021).

Fitzgerald, C., ‘Female Fashion in Restoration England’ (Hons. 2020).

Goodwin, A., ‘ “We have shamefully Indianized”: Cultural and Bodily Change in the Colonial New England Environment’ (Hons. 2019).

Olearczyk, F., ‘Arthur’s Britain and Robin’s England: Uses of the Medieval Past in Seventeenth-Century England’ (Hons. 2019).

 

Publications

Projects and Grants

Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.

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Updated:  28 March 2024 / Responsible Officer:  Director (Research Services Division) / Page Contact:  Researchers