Dr Matthew Neal

My research has focused on various aspects of eighteenth-century culture and discourse. I seek to understand stability and instability in the period in terms of debate and language use. For instance, my doctoral thesis investigated uses of the language of providence in ‘enlightened’ Anglican preaching championing religious toleration. It suggested that such language helped contemporaries to identify toleration as conducive to stability at a time when that policy was deemed as likely to destabilise as to stabilise the country. My research re-centres the eighteenth century on religion and locates ‘enlightened’ social and cultural practices in the context of the politics of faith. My PhD research has been the jumping-off point for a wider research project looking at the religious and confessional roots of radical and reformist discourse in the later eighteenth century.