Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research

Management Board

• Dr Adam Mosley (Director)
• Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy
• Professor Daniel Power
• Professor John Spurr
• Professor Deborah Youngs

Academic Staff

• Dr Emma Cavell
• Dr Catherine Fletcher
• Dr Stefan Halikowski-Smith
• Dr Richard Hall
• Professor Mark Humphries
• Dr Leighton James
• Dr Simon John
• Dr Alexander Langlands
• Dr Roberta Magnani
• Dr Irina Metzler
• Dr Eugene Miakinkov
• Dr Teresa Phipps
• Dr Eoin Price
• Dr Charlie Rozier
• Professor Patricia Skinner
• Dr Matthew Stevens
• Dr Nicholas Taylor-Collins
• Professor David Turner
• Dr Alison Williams
• Dr Laura Kalas Williams

Honorary Research Associates

• Dr Daisy Black
  Specialises in medieval religious drama and has a particular interest in time and gender. Her other research interests include periodization and memory; medieval depictions of Jews and Saracens; narratives of cannibalism and medievalism in modern board game culture. She also works works as a theatre director and playwright, and her dramatic adaptation of 'The Bayeux Tapestry' has been performed at Kalamazoo’s International Medieval Congress.
• Dr Emily Cook
  Received her doctorate from the University of Adelaide in 2013, for a thesis entitled Exchanging Flesh: Prostitution and Plastic Surgery in Seventeenth-Century England.  She has published on topics in the history of surgery, disease, and prostitution, and was a Research Assistant at the University of Winchester on the project 'Effaced from History? The Disfigured and their Stories from Antiquity to the Present Day'.
• Dr Theresa Tyers
  Completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham (School of History). Her doctoral dissertation included research of a wide range of medical codices which were produced during the period c.1200 and 1500 and focussed on the changes that had taken place during the transmission from their Latin source text into the vernacular. She has since worked as a Research Assistant on the medieval Hortus Conclusus project (PI Liz Herbert McAvoy).

Research Students

• Hillary Burgardt (History)
• Geraldine Gnych (History)
• Sylvie Jans (English)
• Ubaldo Morozzi (History)
• Jack Orchard (English) 
• Jeongkyu Park (History)
• Emily Payton (English)
• Jessica Rosenthal McGrath (History)
• Rhiannon Sandy (History)
• Kevin Tracey (History)
• Kathryn Webb (English)
• Ruth Worgan (English)
• Maria Zygogianni (English)

Emeriti

• Professor Emeritus Gino Bedani
• Professor Emerita Catherine Belsey
• Professor Emeritus Ceri Davies
• Dr Hugh Dunthorne
• Professor Emeritus John France
• Professor Emeritus Ralph Griffiths
• Professor Emerita Christine James
• Dr John Law
• Mr Glyn Pursglove

• Gender, Health and the Human Body
• Nature and Nurture
• Place and Space
• Power, Conflict and Empire
• Texts and their Contexts
• The Enduring Past

Find out more

• François Rabelais: Medical Humanist
  
  Dr Alison Williams is currently working on a research project concerning François Rabelais.
  
  Supported by a research leave grant from the Wellcome Trust, this project investigates the fictional works of François Rabelais and his private correspondence in order to demonstrate how his professional medical knowledge informed his approach to writing fiction and his ambitions for what his books might achieve amongst his readers. The primary texts for consideration are Pantagruel, Gargantua, Le Tiers Livre, Le Quart Livre, Le Cinquiesme Livre, despite the latter’s contested authorship, and correspondence such as Rabelais’s letters from Italy. The project analyses the presentation of various medical fields in these texts, taking  account of the extent to which Rabelais reflects Renaissance thought and what deliberate misrepresentation he introduces. Evidence is drawn from Classical, Arabic and Renaissance medical sources to support the analysis as well as from more modern theories of the body such as those proposed by Bakhtin, Kristeva, Laqueur and Green. The project also addresses health promotion via pharmacology, humour and literature as therapy. In the dedicatory epistle to the Quart Livre Rabelais explicitly states how the writer administers to the sick reader in the same way that a doctor attends a patient, and how the creation of art fosters health.  Theories of humour, studies of doctor-patient relationships and of the therapeutic value of the arts underpin an investigation of how Rabelais uses his works to encourage physical and mental wellbeing in his readers.
  
  This project's entry to the 2012 SURF Research as Art Competition can be found here
  
  VIDEO: Alison Williams discusses her project:

Find out more about our MEMO Students!

Find out more about our MEMO Events!

• International Anchoritic Society
  Swansea University is now the home of the International Anchoritic Society (IAS) established in 2003. This is a research network for scholars working in the area of anchoritic studies and associated fields.
• IMEMS
  The Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) is a collaborative institute of Bangor and Aberystwyth universities, funded by HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales). The aim is to foster research into the medieval and early modern periods up to c.1800. One of its main activities is an annual series of video-linked conferences accessible to all universities in Wales. 
• NEER
  The Network for Early European Research (NEER) is a research network, funded by the Australian Research Council and based at the University of Western Australia in Perth, sponsors annual conferences and postgraduate workshops.
• Manuscripts Online
  A collection of online, digitised manuscript and primary source material from the period 1000-1500 AD can be found here, at Manuscripts Online.
• News on the Rialto
  The News on the Rialto newsletter is an annual publication devoted to all aspects of research into Venetian studies and may be accessed HERE!