Dr Michelle Pfeffer

BA Hons Class I (UQ), MSc with distinction, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology (Oxford)

Michelle Pfeffer is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland. Her PhD thesis, ‘Mortalism and the Making of Heterodoxy in Seventeenth Century England’, was funded by an Australian Laureate Fellowship Postgraduate Research Award. The thesis examines some of the first and most influential people in seventeenth-century England to deny the existence of the immortal soul. She submitted her thesis in January 2020.

Her research considers the relationship between natural philosophy, medicine, and theology in the early modern period, and lies at the intersections of history of science and medicine, history of the book, history of scholarship, and the digital humanities. Her current research at IASH focuses on the decline of astrology in the seventeenth century. She is also preparing a digital edition of the records of early modern university disputations held at the University of Oxford.