Susannah Ottaway ’89

Education & Professional History

Brown University, MA; PhD

Highlights & Recent Activity

Recent Publications

“The purposeful workhouse of England’s Old Poor Law,” Past & Present, 2025; gtaf013, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaf013

“Instructing the Young and Comforting the Aged in the Norwich and Norfolk Institution for the Indigent Blind, ca. 1805–55.” Journal of British Studies 63, no. 2 (2024): 411–32. With Adam Smart, and Michael Schultz. https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2023.139.

“Reconsidering Poor Law Institutions by Virtually Constructing and Re-Viewing an Eighteenth-Century Workhouse,” with Austin Mason, The Historical Journal, 64(3), 557-582.

“A very Bad Presidente in the House”: Workhouse Masters, Care and Discipline in the
Eighteenth-Century Workhouse, forthcoming in Journal of Social History (2020).

Recent Grants/Initiatives

Faculty co-director, with Kelly Connole, 4-year, Mellon-funded initiative – Public Works: Arts and Humanities, Connecting Communities

NEH Digital Humanities Advancement grant – contributor to the project “Castle to Classrooms: Developing an Irish Castle in Virtual Reality.”

Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations

North American Conference on British Studies.

American Historical Association.

American Friends of the Institute for Historical Research.

Social Science History Association.

Professor Ottaway’s publications span a number of topics in early modern and eighteenth-century history.  Her work on the history of old age has appeared in her monograph published by Cambridge University Press, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England; an eight-volume co-edited source reader on Old Age in England 1500-1800, a forthcoming co-edited volume on the Cultural History of Old Age (under contract with Bloomsbury) and several articles and book chapters. She has published essays on women’s work and household structures, and, together with Philosophy Professor Anna Moltchanova, on rights and reciprocity in the political and philosophical work of John Locke.  Her recent research has focused on the history of social welfare and has resulted in publications in The Journal of Social History, The Historical Journal, and a chapter in The Workhouse and Medicine.

Recent Courses Taught:

History 100: Soot, Smog and Satanic Mills in Industrializing Britain

History 139: Foundations of Modern Europe

History 200: Historians for Hire

History 217: Engaging Youth in History (Academic Civic Engagement Course)

History 235: Bringing the English Past to Virtual Life (with Austin Mason, DH postdoc)

History 237: The Enlightenment

History 243: The Peasants Are Revolting: The Social and Political History of Early Modern        France

History 245: Ireland: Land, Conflict and Memory

History 298: Junior Colloquium

History 395: The History of Poverty and Social Welfare

History 398: Advanced Historical Writing

Selected Publications:

Books

History of Old Age in England, 1600-1800, 8 volumes.  London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008, and 2009. General Editor, with Lynn Botelho, Anne Kugler and Ingrid Tague.

The ‘Decline of Life’: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Power and Poverty: Old Age in the Pre-Industrial Past. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.Editor, with Lynn Botelho and Katharine Kittredge

Articles and Chapters

“The Purposeful Workhouse of the Long Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present.

“Reconsidering Poor Law Institutions by Virtually Constructing and Re-Viewing an Eighteenth-Century Workhouse,” with Austin Mason, The Historical Journal, 64(3), (2021): 557-582.

“A very Bad Presidente in the House”: Workhouse Masters, Care and Discipline in the Eighteenth-Century Workhouse, forthcoming in Journal of Social History (2020).

“Women, Households, and Independence under the Old English Poor Laws,” in Beatrice Moring, ed., Poor Women’s Economic Strategies (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012).