Elaine Fulton

I was born and raised in Northern Ireland and left there at 18 to read Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where I first discovered a love of Reformation History. Thanks to the expertise and encouragement of the early-modernists at St Andrews, in particular Andrew Pettegree and Bruce Gordon, I stayed to pursue postgraduate study at St Andrews and was funded by the award of two scholarships: a one-year studentship from the Humanities Research Board of the British Academy to support the M.Litt. degree, and a Caledonian Research Foundation Scholarship to fund the PhD. Between 1999 and 2003 I also taught on a broad range of Modern History courses at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh. I was appointed to my current post at the University of Birmingham in 2003.

I am currently Director of Education for the College of Arts and Law. I was an elected member of University Senate 2012-16 and Head of History 2015-18. I became the College’s first teaching-focussed Professor in 2018.

My first monograph, entitled Catholic Belief and Survival in Late-Sixteenth Century Vienna, was published by Ashgate in May 2007. Focused on the career of one of the most prominent Catholic figures of late sixteenth-century Vienna, Georg Eder (1523-1587), this work highlighted the role of the Catholic laity in instigating, enacting and supporting Catholic reform in the early-modern period.

I have also published work pertaining to Disaster History, East Central European History, and Reformation History more broadly (please see Publications section). I am currently planning an undergraduate-level textbook on the Habsburgs and sixteenth century Europe, as well as engaging in pieces of pedagogical research.