University of St Andrews

Faculty Member, Mediaeval History

Lecturer in late mediaeval History

About

I am currently a lecturer in the Department of Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrew. Previously, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. I received my Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2007.

My research is broadly focused on questions of power, law, and  authority in medieval Europe. I have just finished a book manuscript entitled "Violence and the State in Later Medieval Languedoc" 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 new project is a monographic history of the Jacquerie, a revolt that took place outside of Paris in 1358. I then plan to turn to a book -- provisionally entitled "Rape and Europa: Sexual Violence and Territorial Conquest in Pre-modern Europe" -- which will 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," recently published by Ashgate.

Contact Information