I am the Sir John Elliott Junior Research Fellow in Spanish History (1400-1900) at Exeter College, University of Oxford. I research and write histories of conversion, identity making, and categories of religious, social, and ethnic difference in early modern Spain. I am one of the co-convenors of Oxford’s Iberian History Seminar.

From 2016 to 2018 I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Early Modern Conversions project at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. I earned my PhD in History at the University of Toronto. My doctoral thesis, “The Morisco Problem and the politics of belonging in sixteenth-century Valladolid” (2016) was supervised by Dr. Mark Meyerson with committee members Dr. E. Natalie Rothman and Dr. Kenneth Mills. I have an M.A. in History from the University of Toronto and a B.A. in History and English from the University of New Brunswick. 

My research interests include religious conversion and colonial encounters in the early modern Spanish world. I study ideas of difference and belonging in early modern Castile through an analysis of the transformations in political, juridical, and communal identities that formed part of the processes of religious conversion. Building on this work, the next phase of my research investigates concepts of purity, race, and nation in reference to the forcibly converted Moriscos in the early modern Spanish Empire. 

I also love fast music and strong coffee. You can find me among friends on Twitter, Zotero, Humanities Commons, and Women Also Know History.

E-mail: stephanie.cavanaugh[at]exeter.ox.ac.uk