The Society appoints a president each year who is invited to give an address, usually at the time of the annual gathering of the Religious Society of Friends (non-Quakers are welcome). The Society aims to hold other regional meetings each year.
The Society is happy to announce that its President for 2025 is Rosalind Johnson.
Rosalind Johnson is an independent scholar. She has taught at the universities of Chichester and Winchester, and worked for the Victoria County History project in Wiltshire and Somerset. Her PhD on ‘Protestant dissenters in Hampshire, c. 1640-c.1740’ was awarded by the University of Winchester in 2013. Her research interests lie in the field of Protestant nonconformity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly the history of Quakers, the position of women among Friends, and how Quakers interacted with those outside the movement. She is currently working on a history of Quakers in Salisbury and South Wiltshire. Her publications include studies in the field of Quaker history, as well as Protestant nonconformity more generally.
Rosalind has been a member of the Religious Society of Friends since 2001, and attends Salisbury Local Quaker Meeting in Wiltshire.
In the field of Quaker history she has published ‘Payment of tithes among Quakers’, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, vol. 10, no. 1 (June 2024); ‘Quakers and marriage legislation in England in the long eighteenth century’, in Robynne Rogers Healey (ed.), Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690-1830 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021) and ‘The case of the distracted maid: healing and cursing in early Quaker history’, Quaker Studies, vol. 21, issue 1 (June 2016). With Alison Deveson and Roger Ottewill she co-authored ‘Basingstoke Quakers – from persecution to productive enterprise and beyond: Part 1, 1655 to 1800’, Hampshire Studies, vol. 79 (2024), and ‘Basingstoke Quakers – from persecution to productive enterprise and beyond: Part 2, 1800 to 2024’, Hampshire Studies, vol. 80 (2025, forthcoming).
Rosalind’s Presidential Lecture will be entitled – A faithful testimony? Quakers and tithe payments in the mid-18th century.
A date has yet to be arranged for the lecture.
Members and others are invited to contact the Clerk if they are interested in presenting material at a future meeting.
