Professor Rosemary O'Day Englander

Professor O'Day is Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate in History. She was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2011-13) to work on a monograph about early modern English elite families. She was co-Director of the Charles Booth Centre and is currently consultant to the Charles Booth Archive Online project (University of London). Rosemary was educated at the Orme Girls' School in Staffordshire, at the University of York and at King's College, University of London. Before joining the Open University in 1975 she was a research fellow and then a lecturer at Birmingham University. She has held long-term fellowships and visiting appointments at universities and libraries in the United States, France and Germany. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Within history Rosemary's interests range from social and religious history in early modern Britain, Europe and the USA to late nineteenth-century British social and urban history. She has recently published two books on women's lives in the early modern period: Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies, Longman, 2007 and Cassandra Brydges (1670-1735) First Duchess of Chandos: Life and Letters Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Her current work focuses on a monograph study of the Temple family in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuires. This is provisionally entitled : ‘Hester Temple and her Dysfunctional Family: The Temples of Stowe and Burton Dassett, c.1565-1656’  A volume of essays The Wider Family in Early Modern Britain: Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Nephews, Nieces, Sisters and Brothers is also in progress. In March 2008 she presented a paper on 'Matchmaking and Moneymaking: Family Financial Affairs' at the Mid Atlantic Conference on British Studies at Baltimore and in September 2008 she gave a keynote speech on 'The Universities and the Professions' at the Conference commemorating 800 Years of the University of Cambridge. In Spring 2010 she chaired a panel at the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies at Puget Sound. In March 2013 she delivered a paper to the Mid Atlantic Conference on British Studies at Lehman College, New York. An updated and expanded version of this paper was delivered at the Huntington Library in June 2013. The topic was ‘Hester and Thomas Temple, their partnership: If two ride a horse, one must needs ride behind.’  She will deliver a paper to the Buckinghamshire branch of the Historical Association in December 2013.

Outside of academic life Rosemary loves reading, painting, studying wildlife, going to the theatre and cinema and travelling the globe. She is widowed and has three boys and, as a result, not much time, energy or money to do any of these!