Dr Claire McNulty

Claire McNulty, FRHistS, is a historian specialising in the lived female experience of church discipline in early modern Scotland, and beyond. Claire completed her PhD in History at
Queen’s University Belfast where she received a scholarship for ‘Researching the Archive’ at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. (2018-19). She was a Postdoctoral Research Follow on the Medieval Manuscripts project at the Library of Trinity College Dublin, supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Arcadia. Her first monograph on Edinburgh’s Unruly Women: Gender, Discipline, and Power, 1560 – 1660 (Routledge, 2025) adopted a case study approach to illuminate the voices of ordinary women who navigated the church courts to settle neighbourly disputes, negotiate marriage contracts or free husbands from allegations of adultery. She has also published ‘A Case of Adultery in Trinity College, Edinburgh, (2023) and ‘Gryt Abuse is Found in this Toune’ in Chris R. Langley et al. (eds) The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland (2021). She designed and convened research-led modules on ”Women, Sex, and Power in Early Modern Europe’ and ‘Witch-hunting from Early Modernity to the Present Day’ at Queen’s (2022; 2021).