Staff Profiles

I am a historian and journalist with a special interest in the intellectual and cultural history of the English Civil War and its legacy in the British Isles and Europe. I completed my BA, MA and PhD at the University of East Anglia in Norwich working with J.C. Davis and Mark Knights (now Warwick) for my thesis on the republican thinker Henry Neville (1619-1694).

My first monograph, based on my PhD work, was published as Henry Neville and English Republican Culture in the Seventeenth Century: Dreaming of Another Game (Manchester: MUP, 2009). My most recent book looks at The English Republican Exiles in Europe during the Restoration (Cambridge: CUP, 2020). I am currently working on a new project on 'English Republican Ideas and Translation Networks in Early Modern Germany, c1640-1848'.

Before joining Newcastle University as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in December 2020, I taught at the UEA, Queen Mary and Goldsmiths (both University of London), Potsdam University and Humboldt University (Berlin) in Germany and, most recently, across the road at Northumbria University, where I was a (Senior) Lecturer from 2011 to 2015.

I have also worked for various German media, including dpa International, the Catholic News Agency KNA, and the Network for Reporting on Eastern Europe n-ost, where I was responsible for the eurotopics press review.

Between April 2015 and November 2020, I worked as an editor for the German Press Agency dpa in Berlin.

Twitter: @TheHistoryWoman

Blog: https://thehistorywoman.com 

Current Research:

'English Republican Ideas and Translation Networks in Early Modern Germany, c1640-1848'

This project explores the significance of translations for the transmission of seventeenth-century English republican ideas in the German-speaking lands before the Revolution of 1848-9. German political thinkers at the time looked at the constitutional models of their European neighbours for inspiration as the territories formerly ruled by the Holy Roman emperors struggled against outdated feudal structures and strove for national identity and unity. The project aims to gather a body of material that gives us an insight into the distribution, dissemination and reception of English republican works in Germany in a variety of languages, including English, Dutch, French and Latin as well as German to understand the way in which ideas travelled between countries in the form of print. Combining the history of political thought and the history of the book in innovative ways and taking inspiration from translation studies and social network theory, this project will focus on the way works were translated, edited and rewritten for new contexts and audiences - in this case German society from the later seventeenth century to the Vormärz.

Employing Peter Burke's analytical concept of 'cultural translation', the figure of the translator will be assigned a key role both as the reader and first recipient of a work as well as an independent agent able to shape the text in a new language for a new purpose. Particular attention will also be paid to the relationship between translators, editors and political circles. Challenging a largely anglocentric and transatlantic historiography, this transnational and multi-lingual project thus aims to establish the intellectual reach and legacy of the first English Revolution of 1640-60 on the European Continent by focusing on the country that from 1701 had developed an ever closer relationship with England through the Succession Act which established the Hanoverian dynasty on the English throne.

The Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions website for my project can be accessed here.

• Mahlberg G. ‘”Neither my faith nor my reason can come up to what you hold”: Henry Neville as a heterodox thinker’. In: Barber,A;East,K, ed. The Politics of Religion 1640-1740: ideas and controversy on the margins of orthodoxy. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2023. In Preparation.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Algernon Sidney in German: the reviewer as an agent of cultural translation’. In: Mahlberg,G;Munck,T, ed. Ideas across borders: translating visions of authority and civil society in Europe, c.1600-1840. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. In Preparation.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Rights of Asylum’. In: Fitzmaurice, A;Hammersley,R, ed. Early Modern Rights (c.1500-1700). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. In Preparation.
• Mahlberg G, Munck T, ed. Ideas across borders: translating visions of authority and civil society in Europe, c.1600-1840. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. In Preparation.
• Mahlberg G. Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain. By Nadine Akkerman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Journal of Modern History 2022, 94(3), 692-693.
• Mahlberg G. The state of nature: histories of an idea, edited by Mark Somos and Anne Peters, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2022 ISBN: 9789004395176. European Review of History 2022, epub ahead of print.
• Mahlberg Gaby. ‘HENRY NEVILLE. The Isle of Pines and Plato Redivivus, ed. David Womersley. Carmel: Liberty Fund, 2021. Pp. lvi + 489. $24; $14.50 (paper)’. The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 2021. Submitted.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Wansleben reads Harrington: Wansleben, the Harrington Manuscript, and English Republicanism’. In: Ben-Tov, A; Loop, J; Mulsow, M, ed. Ludolf und Wansleben – Orientalistik, Politik und Geschichte zwischen Gotha und Afrika 1650-1700. Leiden: Brill, 2023. Submitted.
• Mahlberg Gaby. The Rule of Manhood: Tyranny, Gender, and Classical Republicanism in England, 1603-1660 by Jamie A. Gianoutsos [Book review]. The Seventeenth Century 2021, 36(5), 858-860.
• Mahlberg G. Reading and translating Algernon Sidney's Discourses in early modern Germany. History of European Ideas 2021, Epub ahead of print.
• Mahlberg G. The English Republican Exiles in Europe during the Restoration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Matthew Hale on the Law of Nature, Reason, and Common Law: Selected Jurisprudential Writings, ed. Gerald J. Postema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, ISBN 9780199234929, £50.’. Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association 2019, 54(1), 98-100.
• Mahlberg G. Writing Conscience and the Nation in Revolutionary England, by Giuseppina Iacono Lobo [Book review]. English Historical Review 2019, 134(568), 708-710.
• Mahlberg G. The Parliament of Women and the Restoration Crisis. In: Cuttica C; Peltonen M, ed. Democracy and Anti-Democracy in Early Modern England 1603–1689. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019, pp.279-296.
• Mahlberg G. Hugo Grotius and the Century of Revolution 1613–1718: Transnational Reception in English Political Thought, written by Marco Barducci [Book review]. Grotiana 2018, 39(1), 137-151.
• Mahlberg G. Machiavelli, Neville and the seventeenth-century English Republican attack on priestcraft. Intellectual History Review 2018, 28(1), 79-99.
• Mahlberg G. Charles Stuart as office-holder: On regicides and monarchical republicans. In: Pankratz A; Viol C, ed. (Un)Making the Monarchy. Heidelberg: Winter, 2017, pp.177-200.
• Mahlberg G. Gaby Mahlberg, review of Women Writing the English Republic 1625-1681. Reviews in History 2017, 2197.
• Mahlberg G. The English Republican Exiles in Europe. Philosophical Enquiries. Revue des philosophies Anglophones 2017, 8, 35-59.
• Mahlberg G. Citizenship and Exile: English Republicanism in a Transnational Context. Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique/ French Journal of British Studies 2016, 21(1).
• Mahlberg G. Le républicanisme anglais et le mythe de l’anticatholicisme. In: Caron N; Marche G, ed. La politisation du religieux en modernité. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015, pp.17-30.
• Cuttica C, Mahlberg G, ed. Patriarchal Moments: Reading Patriarchal Texts. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
• Mahlberg G. Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen, eds, Freedom and the Construction of Europe [Book review]. European History Quarterly 2015, 45(3), 596-600.
• Mahlberg G. Les Juges Jugez, se Justifians (1663) and Edmund Ludlow’s protestant network in seventeenth-century Switzerland. Historical Journal 2014, 57(2), 369-396.
• Mahlberg G. Contexto histórico y político de The Isle of Pines. El marco biográfico. In: Margarit L; Montes E, ed. Textos utópicos en la Inglaterra del siglo XVII. Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2014, pp.55-68.
• Mahlberg G. God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell, Blair Worden, 2012, Oxford: Oxford University Press, xi + 421 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-957049-2. Bunyan Studies 2014, 18, 148-152.
• Wiemann D, Mahlberg G, ed. Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Wansleben’s Harrington, or “The Fundations & Modell of a Perfect Commonwealth”’. In: Mahlberg, G; Wiemann, D, ed. European Contexts for English Republicanism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
• Mahlberg G, Wiemann D, ed. European Contexts for English Republicanism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
• Mahlberg G. The Isle of Pines, 1668: Henry Neville's Uncertain Utopia by John Scheckter. Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 2013, 37(1), pp. 87-89.
• Mahlberg G. 'M. Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006, pp. 218. hb. £45, ISBN: 0754641155'. The Seventeenth Century 2013, 22(1).
• Mahlberg G. ‘An island with potential: Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668)’. In: Davis, JC; Ramiro Avilés, MA, ed. Utopian Moments: Reading Utopian Texts. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Authors Losing Control: The European Transformations of Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668)'. Book History 2012, 15.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Patriarchalism and the monarchical republicans'. In: Cuttica, C; Burgess, G, ed. Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. In Preparation.
• Mahlberg G. ‘The republican discourse on religious liberty during the Exclusion Crisis’. History of European Ideas 2012, 38(3), 352-369.
• Mahlberg G. Gender and the English RevolutionANN HUGHES. Women's History Review 2012, 22(3).
• Mahlberg G. 'Political Biblicism and the Coming of Civil War'. History of European Ideas 2012, 38(2), 307-311.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Author-Politicians and Political Authors: The Example of Henry Neville (1619-94)’. In: Frenk, J; Steveker, L, ed. Anglistentag 2010, Saarbrücken, Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2011.
• Mahlberg G. ‘”All the conscientious and honest papists”: Exile and Belief Formation of an English Republican: Henry Neville (1619-94)'. In: Schaff, B, ed. Exiles, Emigrés and Intermediaries: Anglo–Italian Cultural Transactions. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Henry Neville and the Toleration of Catholics during the Exclusion Crisis’. Historical Research 2010, 83(222), 617–634.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Neo-Harringtonianism and A Letter Sent to General Monk (1660) revisited’. The Seventeenth Century 2009, 24(2), 305-22.
• Mahlberg G. Henry Neville and English Republican Culture in the Seventeenth Century: Dreaming of Another Game. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.
• Mahlberg G. ‘Republicanism as anti-patriarchalism in Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668),’. In: Scott, J; Morrow, J, ed. Liberty, Authority, Formality. Imprint Academic, 2008.
• Mahlberg G. ‘A Parliament of Ladies und die Öffentlichkeit des Privaten: politischer Diskurs im England des 17. Jahrhunderts'. In: Emmelius, C, ed. Offen und Verborgen: Vorstellungen und Praktiken des Öffentlichen und Privaten in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004, pp.229-47.