Participant Info

First Name
Rachel
Last Name
Delman
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
University of York
Website URL
https://oxford.academia.edu/RachelDelman
Keywords
Gender, domestic space, built environment, late medieval
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Rachel Delman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of History at the University of York. She specialises in women’s and gender history, material culture and the built environment. Rachel’s current research considers the contributions made by townswomen to civic architecture in late medieval England and Scotland.

Rachel’s AHRC-funded doctoral thesis (awarded from the University of Oxford in December 2017) took an interdisciplinary approach to houses that were headed by noblewomen, so as to consider how female authority was articulated through the design, layout and use of the late medieval great residence and its wider landscape. She is currently preparing her thesis as a monograph for publication with OUP.

Between September 2018 and May 2019, Rachel held the Susan Manning Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, where she undertook research on the architectural patronage of the Scottish queen regent, Mary of Guelders (d. 1463).

Collaborations with the heritage sector are a core facet of Rachel’s work. She has acted as a historical advisor to properties teams at the National Trust, and she played a leading role in collaboratively devising, researching and implementing a panel display and walking tour titled ‘Coventry’s Medieval Women of Influence’, for Coventry’s September 2018 Heritage Open Days. She was also the main speaker at The Collyweston ‘Palace Weekend’, a public history event where the results of a community dig on the site of Margaret Beaufort’s palace were revealed.

Recent Publications

Articles

‘Childbirth, Gendered Viewing and Female Authority in Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk’s Residence at Ewelme, Oxfordshire’, Journal of Medieval History, May 2019.

Co-authored with A. Boeles Rowland, ‘People, Places and Possessions in Late Medieval England’, Introduction to the Journal of Medieval History’s Special Issue of the same name,  May 2019.

Book Reviews

Review of B. McDonagh, Elite Women and the Agricultural Landscape, 1700-1830 (London, 2018), Institute of Historical Research: Reviews in History, in preparation.

Review of J. L. Laynesmith: Cecily Duchess of York (2017), English Historical Review, 133/4 (2018), forthcoming.

Review of N. Saul: Lordship and faith. The English gentry and the parish church in the Middle Ages (2017), Agricultural History Review, forthcoming.

Blogs and Online Publications

‘Deer Parks’, entry contributed to the Oxford University/National Trust ‘Trusted Source’ webpage,  August 2018.

‘Dovecotes’, entry contributed to the Oxford University/National Trust ‘Trusted Source’ webpage, January 2018.

‘The Future of Heritage’, Guest blog post on ‘The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities’ webpage, June 2017.

Co-authored with P. Linton, ‘Parenthood & Childhood in the Middle Ages’, Conference Report, University of Edinburgh, 8th-9th October 2015, Journal of the Northern Renaissance: Polaris, 3rd August 2016.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United Kingdom
Expertise by Geography
England
Expertise by Chronology
Medieval, Pre-17th century
Expertise by Topic
Art & Architectural History, Gender, Material Culture, Public History, Women