Amy Craig

I am a PhD student at St. John’s College, Cambridge. My research explores the flourishing small-scale material culture of eighteenth-century Britain, with a particular focus on the unique affective and embodied meanings invested in small things by a diverse range of contemporary actors. Taking an object-centred approach, the project seeks to rehabilitate the status of ‘toys’, ‘trinkets’ and ‘trifles’ as vital historical agents worthy of scholarly investigation. My PhD is kindly supported by an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP – Ibn Battutah Studentship. 
As part of my doctoral training, I have also undertaken a placement with the National Trust, researching the role of Margaret Armstrong as co-creator of Cragside, Northumberland. Prior to my PhD, I completed both a BA in History, and an MPhil in Early Modern History, at the University of Cambridge. My MPhil thesis explored eighteenth-century dolls’ houses, or ‘baby houses’, illuminating the essential position of these miniature material worlds within the wider lives of their female users. My broader research interests include material culture, and histories of the body, senses, and emotions.