Dr Gemma Allen is an historian with a love of the Tudor and Stuart period. Her research concentrates especially on sixteenth and seventeenth-century women, with a particular focus on letter-writing and the history of women and politics. She has published widely on the Cooke sisters, five remarkable but little-known Tudor women, and has edited the letters of Lady Anne Bacon.

She is a Senior Lecturer at The Open University, where she is also the Director of Research, Scholarship and Enterprise for the School of Arts and Humanities. She is also a retained lecturer at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. Gemma is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a BBC Expert Woman.

Gemma studied for her undergraduate degree in History and English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, graduating top of her year with a double first. After working as a researcher for historical TV documentaries, she returned to Oxford for postgraduate study, receiving her doctorate in 2010 from Jesus College. She held lectureships at Lincoln and Pembroke College, Oxford, before joining The Open University as a lecturer in 2012.