Post-Doc, History
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
All Souls College
Thesis Title: Guerram publice et palam faciendo [Publicly and openly making war]: Local War and Royal Authority in Late Medieval Southern France (Harvard, 2007)
About
I am currently a post-doctoral research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, having finished a Ph.D. in medieval history at Harvard University in 2007.
My research is broadly focused on questions of power, law, and legitimate authority in medieval Europe. At the moment, I am working on a book entitled "Violence and the State: Seigneurial Warfare and Royal Authority in Later Medieval France" which focuses on so-called "private war" and royal responses to that violence from ca. 1250 to 1415. The book argues that although French kings and their administrators had neither the intention nor the ability to construct a modern state by asserting a monopoly over legitimate violence to seigneurial detriment, they nevertheless durably increased royal power by creating judicial and administrative networks through which seigneurial conflicts could be negotiated.
My next project, provisionally entitled "Rape and Europa: Sexual Violence and Territorial Conquest in Pre-modern Europe," will look at archival, literary, and artistic evidence to explore the actual and metaphorical relationships between the capture and violation of women's bodies and the assertion of political power, ca. 1000-1500.
I am also the co-editor (with Meredith Cohen) of a collection of essays on the cultural and social history of marginalization in medieval France entitled "Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France," which is currently in press with Ashgate. And I am the Communications Director and Web master for the International Medieval Society - Paris/Société internationale des médiévistes de Paris, an organization that aids foreign medievalists researching in France.
Contact Information
All Souls College
Oxford OX1 4AL
U.K.
(+44) (0)1 865 279352
