Dr Michelle Pfeffer

Background

I received my BA in History from The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia and my MSc in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Harris Manchester College, Oxford, for which I was awarded the Charles Webster Prize. My PhD in History, supported by the Australian Research Council, was awarded by UQ in 2020. Before joining Magdalen as a Prize Fellow in Early Modern History, I taught history and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at UQ. I have also been a Lisa Jardine History of Science scholar at the Royal Society of London. I am the winner of the 2021 John Bunyan Society Early Career Prize. Some of my academic activities have been undertaken under the name Michelle Aroney.

Research

I am a historian of science and religion specialising in the early modern period. Much of my work explores how scientific and religious ideas, traditions, and institutions worked in tandem to shape historical shifts often said to belong to the so-called ‘disenchantment of the world’.

My first book in this vein, The Mortalism Crisis: Scholarship, Society, and the Soul in Early Enlightenment England, will explore how the immortality of the soul—a topic of mutual natural philosophical and theological interest—was rejected by lay people steeped in popularised scientific, biblical, and historical scholarship, who argued that the very concept of the soul was an artefact of ancient pagan religion rather than true philosophy or theology.

My current research explores the history of astrology and divination. I recently published (with David Zeitlyn) Divination, Oracles, and Omens (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2024), which accompanies our Bodleian Library exhibition ‘Oracles, Omens & Answers’, which is running until 27 April 2025. It has been reviewed in the TLS, The Guardian, New Scientist, Apollo Magazine, and several other outlets.

I’m currently working on two books: one on the decline of astrology in early modern England, and the other on the role of astrologers and diviners in the long history of forecasting. Both stem from longstanding interests. In terms of the former, I’ve written about the marginalisation of astrology in the Historical Journal and The British Journal for the History of Science, and in 2021 I organised with Jan Machielsen and Robin Briggs a conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sir Keith Thomas’s classic Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) (recordings of the event can be found here). Jan and I later co-authored an article on this topic for Past and Present. In regards to the history of forecasting, I have long been interested in the history of epidemics, and curating the Bodleian exhibition has enabled me to think through the longer history of forecasting not only epidemic disease, but also other population-level events. I have written about the role played by astrologers in early epidemiological forecasting for Past and Present and in 2023 curated an exhibition (with Richard Allen) at Magdalen called Plague! at Magdalen: Epidemics and Public Life.

I am passionate about outreach and public engagement with research. I write regularly for public audiences (for example in History Today and The Conversation), and am represented by Kate Evans at Peters Fraser + Dunlop. I enjoy contributing to radio and podcast programmes; some of my recent interviews can be found here, here, and here. A few years ago, I contributed to a virtual tour of the Old Library at Magdalen that can be found here; I also recently enjoyed being a part of an Oxplore webinar for schools on Do we make our own luck?

Publications

• with David Zeitlyn, Divination, Oracles, and Omens (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2024).
• ‘Astrology, Plague, and Prognostication in Early Modern England: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Public Health’, Past & Present 263 (2024): 81-124.
• ‘Reassessing the Marginalization of Astrology in the Early Modern World’, The Historical Journal 66 (5) (2023): 1152-1176.
• with Jan Machielsen, ‘A Work Out of Time: Religion and the Decline of Magic at 50’, Past & Present 261 (2023): 259-96.
• ‘The Contribution of the Early Modern Humanities to “Disenchantment”’, Journal of Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 16 (3) (2021): 398-405.
• ‘The Society of Astrologers (c. 1647–1684): Sermons, Feasts, and the Resuscitation of Astrology in Seventeenth-Century London’, The British Journal for the History of Science 54(2) (2021): 133-153. 
• ‘The Pentateuch and Immortality in England and the Dutch Republic: The Confessionalisation of a Claim’, in The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age: Comparative Approaches, eds., Ian Maclean and Dmitri Levitin (Brill, 2021). 
• ‘Paganism, Natural Reason, and Immortality: Charles Blount and John Toland’s Histories of the Soul’, Intellectual History Review 31(4) (2021): 563-583.