Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: book history, religious history, monastic history, nuns, women's history, medieval, France, Premonstratensian Order, Picardy, Middle Ages

About Me: I am a historian of medieval women and the social history of religion, with a particular focus on the history of the Premonstratensian Order in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. In other words, I’m interested in how religious institutions like monasteries affected the world around them: how did the construction of abbeys change the landscape? how did their patterns of consumption and production affect the local economy? what can manuscripts produced by monks tell us about the workings of everyday secular society? how did membership or patronage of a religious community allow for a medieval woman to exercise her social or political power?

I’m also interested in book/documentary history, the history of aristocratic women, and digital history.

I earned my Ph.D. in History from the University of Iowa in 2018, and hold an M.Litt. in Mediæval History from the University of St Andrews and a B.A. in History/Archaeology from Trinity College Dublin.

Recent Publications: I have written for major international news outlets Vox and RTÉ, and contributed articles to public-facing websites such as Nursing Clio and Public Medievalist. I have been a consultant for pieces in Forbes and Bustle.

My writing has appeared in academic publications such as the Journal of Medieval Monastic History, History Today, and The Public Domain Review. My edition of the 13th-century cartulary of Prémontré was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2023.