![Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin BA (hons), MA, PhD, FHEA, FRHistS](https://profiles-cardiff.imgix.net/attachments/2062?w=200&h=200&auto=format&crop=faces&fit=crop&q=90")
Dr Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin
(she/her)
BA (hons), MA, PhD, FHEA, FRHistS
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Teams and roles for Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin
Lecturer in Early Modern History
Overview
I am an early modern historian with expertise in artisanal cultures, urban space and architecture, and networks of craft, ‘scientific’ and medical knowledge. My research is fundamentally interdisciplinary, bridging historical, spatial and material culture studies. My published work has explored themes such as embodied knowledge and occupational identities, material cultures of memorialisation, gifting rites among artisans and merchants, and experimental urban spaces.
My first monograph, Crafting Identities: Artisan Culture in London, c.1500-1640 (MUP, 2021), demonstrated how livery halls became multifunctional sites for technical innovation, civic memorialisation, and social and political exchange. Crafting Identities was short-listed for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion in 2022, awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. My latest book, co-authored with Rebekah Higgitt, is Metropolitan Science: London Sites and Cultures of Knowledge and Practice, c.1600-1800 (Bloomsbury, 2024). We present a new history of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century urban science and innovation that is rooted in artisanal, commercial, and mercantile spaces, and material and instrumental expertise.
My new research project is provisionally titled ‘Surgeons at sea: medicine, knowledge and shipboard society in the early modern world’. This project will explore how long-distance voyages across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans shaped early modern surgeons’ therapeutic practices, knowledge cultures and occupational identities. You can read more about this research in The Conversation – https://theconversation.com/saving-lives-and-limbs-on-the-high-seas-the-extraordinary-world-of-early-modern-ships-surgeons-246382
I joined Cardiff University in 2020 as Lecturer in Early Modern History (on the Disglair Lecturers scheme). Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project, Metropolitan Science, at the University of Kent (2017-20), and Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge (2016-17).
https://welshcrucible.org.uk/jasmine-kilburn-toppin/
Publication
2025
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2025. 'The product of real experiences': seventeenth-century surgeons at sea. In: McShane, A. and Reinke-Williams, T. eds. From the Margins to the Centre in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays in Honour of Bernard Capp. Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History Boydell
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2025. Recipes, gold and information exchange: Workshop cultures in the Early Modern Metropolis. In: Weller, T. et al. eds. The Routledge Handbook of Information History. London: Routledge
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2025. Saving lives and limbs on the high seas: the extraordinary world of early modern ship's surgeons. The Conversation 2025(20 Jan)
2024
- Moxham, N., Higgitt, R. and Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2024. Metropolitan science: London sites and cultures of knowledge and practice, c. 1600-1800. Bloomsbury Academic.
2023
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2023. Underground mathematics: Craft culture and knowledge production in Early Modern Europe [Book Review]. Journal of Design History(20) (10.1093/jdh/epad044)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2023. Carla Roth, the talk of the town: information and community in sixteenth-century Switzerland. [Book Review]. Urban History 50(3), pp. 599-600. (10.1017/S0963926823000202)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2023. [Book review] Margarette Lincoln. London and the Seventeenth Century: The Making of the World's Greatest City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. Journal of British Studies 62(1), pp. 256-257. (10.1017/jbr.2022.208)
2022
- Kilburn-Toppin, J., Tierney, E. and Wildman, C. 2022. Researching urban space and the built environment. Manchester University Press.
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2022. Instrument makers, shops, and expertise in eighteenth-century London. In: McOuat, G. and Stewart, L. eds. Spaces of Enlightenment Science. Knowledge Infrastructure and Knowledge Economy Brill, pp. 74-90.
2021
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2021. Crafting identities: Artisan culture in London, c.1550-1640. Studies in Design and Material Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2021. Writing knowledge, forging histories: metallurgical recipes, artisan-authors and institutional cultures in early modern London. Cultural and Social History 18(3), pp. 297-314. (10.1080/14780038.2021.1902607)
- Higgitt, R., Kilburn-Toppin, J. and Moxham, N. 2021. Science and the City: Spaces and geographies of Metropolitan Science. Science Museum Group Journal 15 (10.15180/211506)
2019
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2019. 'A place of great trust to be supplied by men of skill and integrity': assayers and knowledge cultures in late sixteenth-and seventeenth-century London. British Journal for the History of Science 52(2), pp. 197-223. (10.1017/S0007087419000219)
2017
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2017. Gifting cultures and artisanal guilds in sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century London. Historical Journal 60(4), pp. 865-887. (10.1017/S0018246X16000583)
2013
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2013. Material memories of the guildsmen. Crafting identities in early modern London. In: Kuijpers, E. and Pollmann, J. eds. Memory before modernity. Practices of memory in early modern Europe., Vol. 176. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Leiden: Brill, pp. 165-181., (10.1163/9789004261259_011)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2013. “Discords have arisen and brotherly love decreased’: the spatial and material contexts of the guild feast in early modern London’. Brewery History 150, pp. 28-38.
Articles
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2025. Saving lives and limbs on the high seas: the extraordinary world of early modern ship's surgeons. The Conversation 2025(20 Jan)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2023. Underground mathematics: Craft culture and knowledge production in Early Modern Europe [Book Review]. Journal of Design History(20) (10.1093/jdh/epad044)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2023. Carla Roth, the talk of the town: information and community in sixteenth-century Switzerland. [Book Review]. Urban History 50(3), pp. 599-600. (10.1017/S0963926823000202)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2023. [Book review] Margarette Lincoln. London and the Seventeenth Century: The Making of the World's Greatest City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. Journal of British Studies 62(1), pp. 256-257. (10.1017/jbr.2022.208)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2021. Writing knowledge, forging histories: metallurgical recipes, artisan-authors and institutional cultures in early modern London. Cultural and Social History 18(3), pp. 297-314. (10.1080/14780038.2021.1902607)
- Higgitt, R., Kilburn-Toppin, J. and Moxham, N. 2021. Science and the City: Spaces and geographies of Metropolitan Science. Science Museum Group Journal 15 (10.15180/211506)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2019. 'A place of great trust to be supplied by men of skill and integrity': assayers and knowledge cultures in late sixteenth-and seventeenth-century London. British Journal for the History of Science 52(2), pp. 197-223. (10.1017/S0007087419000219)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2017. Gifting cultures and artisanal guilds in sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century London. Historical Journal 60(4), pp. 865-887. (10.1017/S0018246X16000583)
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2013. “Discords have arisen and brotherly love decreased’: the spatial and material contexts of the guild feast in early modern London’. Brewery History 150, pp. 28-38.
Book sections
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2025. 'The product of real experiences': seventeenth-century surgeons at sea. In: McShane, A. and Reinke-Williams, T. eds. From the Margins to the Centre in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays in Honour of Bernard Capp. Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History Boydell
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2025. Recipes, gold and information exchange: Workshop cultures in the Early Modern Metropolis. In: Weller, T. et al. eds. The Routledge Handbook of Information History. London: Routledge
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2022. Instrument makers, shops, and expertise in eighteenth-century London. In: McOuat, G. and Stewart, L. eds. Spaces of Enlightenment Science. Knowledge Infrastructure and Knowledge Economy Brill, pp. 74-90.
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2013. Material memories of the guildsmen. Crafting identities in early modern London. In: Kuijpers, E. and Pollmann, J. eds. Memory before modernity. Practices of memory in early modern Europe., Vol. 176. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Leiden: Brill, pp. 165-181., (10.1163/9789004261259_011)
Books
- Moxham, N., Higgitt, R. and Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2024. Metropolitan science: London sites and cultures of knowledge and practice, c. 1600-1800. Bloomsbury Academic.
- Kilburn-Toppin, J., Tierney, E. and Wildman, C. 2022. Researching urban space and the built environment. Manchester University Press.
- Kilburn-Toppin, J. 2021. Crafting identities: Artisan culture in London, c.1550-1640. Studies in Design and Material Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Teaching
BA History
Year 1
HS1117: Renaissance, Reformation and Revolution
HS1119: History in Practice Part I: Questions, Frameworks and Audiences
HS1120: History in Practice Part II: Sources, Evidence and Argument
Year 2
HS6201: Reading History
HS6203: Debating History
HS6222: Environmental Histories
Year 3
HS1801: Dissertation
HS1826: City Lives: Urban Culture and Society, c.1550-c.1750
MA History
HST081: Sources and Evidence
HST082: Space, Place and Historical Research
HST083: Theories, Methods and Practices of History
HST085: Writing History: Dissertation Preparation
HST086: Dissertation