Cliopatria welcomes Sharon Howard to its circle. A native of Suffolk, England, Dr. Howard graduated in history from the University of Wales at Aberyswyth, earned an M. A. in women's and gender history at the University of York and returned to Aberyswyth for doctoral studies. Her dissertation was:"Crime, Community and Authority in Early Modern Wales:Denbighshire, ca 1660-1730". Currently, she is a post-doctoral fellow of the British Academy in residence at Aberyswyth. Dr. Howard has maintained the Early Modern Resources website since 2000. This summer, she launched her own blog, Early Modern Notes. Beyond crime in early modern Wales, Dr. Howard's interests include:

films, especially noir, Hollywood comedies of the 30s, historical films, horror, the Coen brothers; reading, especially crime novels and historical fiction (and meetings of the two!), eighteenth-century novels (Defoe, Fielding, etc), some sci-fi; music: ska, punk, blues, funk, Ani di Franco; cooking, organic food and the fair trade movement; horses (some teenage things you never quite get over); learning Welsh, badly; shouting at the TV (it's what happens when you live on your own); wishing I had a cat.

We welcome Sharon Howard, Cliopatriarch of Wales. Well, actually, she's in charge of most of Europe until we get the rest of the hierarchy in place ...