Participant Info

First Name
Hope
Last Name
Williard
Country
Netherlands
State
Affiliation
Utrecht University
Website URL
https://uu.academia.edu/HopeWilliard
Keywords
Late Antiquity, Early Middle Ages, Post-Roman World, Merovingian Kingdoms, letter writing, Latin poetry, literary culture, early medieval Europe, Dark Ages
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, where I work with Robert Flierman and Anne Sieberichs on the project “Lettercraft and Epistolary Performance in Early Medieval Europe, 476–751 CE”. My research explores letter writing and literary culture in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. I am particularly interested in the reuse and transformation of Roman culture in the late antique and early medieval worlds, which is in the subject of my first book Friendship in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Venantius Fortunatus and his contemporaries (ARC Humanities Press, 2022).

Prior to coming to Utrecht, I was an associate lecturer (adjunct professor) and academic subject librarian for classics and medieval studies at the University of Lincoln, where I taught a range of courses on the ancient and medieval worlds, including a module on ancient graffiti. From August 2022 to April 2023, I held a Research Libraries UK/AHRC Professional Practice Fellowship, researching how PhD students in history learn to find, use, and make digital tools and resources for their work.

I did my PhD in History at the University of Leeds (2017), an MPhil in Medieval History at Cambridge (2012), and a BA in Medieval Studies at Brown University (2011)

Recent Publications

Williard, Hope (2023). Letter Carriers and the Scale of Communication in the Epistolae of Sidonius Apollinaris. In K. Sessa, & K. Uhalde (Eds.), Scale and the Study of Late Antiquity: Collected Essays from the 14th Meeting of Shifting Frontiers (pp. 153-167). Edipuglia. https://edipuglia.it/catalogo/scale-and-the-studyof-late-antiquity-pdf/

Williard, Hope (2022) Friendship in the Merovingian Kingdoms. ARC Humanities Press, Leeds.

Wood, Jamie; Williard, Hope; and East, Matt (2022) Collaborative Annotation to Support Students’ Online Reading Skills. In: Designing Courses with Digital Technologies: Insights and Examples from History Education. Routledge, New York, pp. 66-71. ISBN 978-0-367-62553-5

Williard, Hope (2022) Apostles Creed [and six other entries]. In: The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 9780199642465

Williard, Hope (2021) How Hope Williard Does History (contingentmagazine.org)

Williard, Hope and Monaghan, Oonagh (2021) Critical reflections and collaborative approaches to the University of Lincoln’s decolonising projects: A library perspective. IMPact, 4 (2). pp. 1-8. ISSN 2516-7561

“Friendship and Diplomacy in the Histories of Gregory of Tours,” in The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World, eds. Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Pia Lucas and Tamar Rotman, (London: Bloomsbury, 2019 ), pp. 41-54

“Letter-Writing and Literary Culture in Merovingian Gaul,” European Review of History 21:5 (2014), pp. 691-710.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland
Expertise by Geography
British Isles, France, Mediterranean, United Kingdom, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
Ancient, Medieval
Expertise by Topic
Book History, Diplomacy, Gender, Higher Ed, Libraries & Archives, Literary History, Pedagogy, Religion, Women