David Turner read History at Brasenose College, graduating in 1993. After completing an MA in Historical Research (passed with Distinction) at the University of Durham, he returned to Oxford to take his DPhil under the supervision of Dr Martin Ingram. While finishing his doctorate he held a Scouloudi Research Fellowship and subsequently the first Past and Present Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, both at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. From 1999 to 2004 he was Lecturer and then Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan, where he also served as History Field Leader (2003-4). He joined Swansea University in January 2005.

Dr Turner is Associate Director of GENCAS, the University's Centre for Research into Gender in Culture and Society. He is also a member of MEMO, Swansea's Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research.

Current research

Dr Turner is an expert in the social and cultural history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and has particular interests in gender, marriage and sexuality, and disability.  He has written on the history of the body and is currently developing a project on representations of disability and experiences of impairment in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. This study will be based on legal records, medical and theological texts, newspapers, visual sources, pamphlets and popular culture. Following his previous publications on the history of marriage, Dr Turner is also interested in the history of bigamy and polygamy in the early modern period, and plans to publish a monograph on plural marriage in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English society and culture.

Principal Publications

Books

• (ed., with Kevin Stagg), Social Histories of Disability and Deformity (London: Routledge, 2006)
• Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England 1660-1740 (Cambridge University Press, 2002 (hbk); 2007 (pbk))

Book-chapters and journal articles

• 'Adulterous Kisses and the Meanings of Familiarity in Early Modern Britain', in Karen Harvey, ed., The Kiss in History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 80-97
• 'Popular Marriage and the Law: Tales of Bigamy at the Eighteenth-Century Old Bailey', The London Journal, 35 (2005), 6-21
• ' "Secret and Immodest Curiosities?" Sex, Marriage and Conscience in Early Modern England', in Harald Braun and Edward Vallance, eds., Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004), 132-150
• ' "Nothing Is So Secret But Shall Be Revealed": The Scandalous Life of Robert Foulkes', in Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, eds., English Masculinities, 1660-1800 (London: Longman, 1999), 169-192

Electronic publications

• ‘Conduct and Politeness in the Early Modern Period’, introductory essay for Defining Gender, 1450-1914, Online (Adam Matthew Publications, 2003)

Principal research awards, fellowships & prizes

• Wellcome Trust Research Doctoral Studentship, 'Medicine, Healing and the Family in Wales, 1600-1750', 2006-2009 [research being undertaken y Mr Alun Withey]
• Visiting fellow, St Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, 2004
• Visiting fellow, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, 2001