Dr Jessica Ayres

Researcher | Historian | Archive professional

My research, publications and talks

Here you will find more out about my areas of research interest, and output, including published pieces of work, citations, and talks I have given.  

I completed my PhD at the University of York in 2023. My thesis, Women in London’s Court of Orphans, 1660-1720, focused on the ways that women navigated and interacted with corporate and civic institutions, and explored the relationship between administrative process and record keeping.

Women in London’s Court of Orphans, 1660-1720, Unpublished PhD thesis, 2023.

‘Curia Orphanorum?: Orphan Administration and Record Keeping in the City of London, 1660-1725’, The London Journal (forthcoming)

  • London’s Court of Orphans – Society of Genealogists, 2025
  • Professional Sustainability: the Level 7 Apprenticeship – Archives and Records Association Annual Conference, 2024
  • Working Widows in Seventeenth-Century London – The London Archives, 2024
  • Finding Women in London’s Court of Orphans, 1660-1720 – Archives for London, 2023
  • Mothers as Guardians in London’s Court of Orphans, 1660-1720 – Foundling Museum, 2023
  • Women in the Financial Records of London’s Court of Orphans, 1660-1694 – Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, 2022
  • Widows and Credit in the London Court of Orphans’ Probate Inventories, 1660-1720 – Women, Money and Markets 1600-1900, University of Zurich, 2021
  • The Women of London’s Court of Orphans and the Orphan Act, 1682-1694 – History Lab, Institute of Historical Research, 2021
  • Women’s Petitions to London’s Court of Orphans, 1660-1740 – Female Experience in Early Modern England, University of Auckland, 2020