I am a research associate on 'Musical Lives: Towards an Historical Anthropology of French Song, 1100-1300 (MUSLIVE)', led by Professor Emma Dillon and funded by a UK Research Innovation grant [project reference EP/X022501/1].

I completed my undergraduate degree in the department of Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic (ASNC) at the University of Cambridge (2009), then continued on at Cambridge to a Masters in Medieval History (2011) and a PhD in ASNC titled 'Hostages in Early Medieval Britain' (2016).

Since then, I have collaborated on a number of international research projects: at the Freie Universitat Berlin (2016-19) on 'After Empire: Using and Not Using the Past in the Crisis of the Carolingian World, c. 900-1050', at Royal Holloway on 'Connected Clerics. Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West (380-640 CE)' (2019-21), and most recently at the University of Edinburgh on 'Priests in a Post-Imperial World, c. 900-1050' (2021-24).

Research interest and PhD Supervision

• Medieval History c. 600-1300
• Documentary Culture
• Diplomatic Practices (Hostages, Gift-giving, Fosterage, Ransom)
• Kinship and Social Networks
• Legal Practices in Western Europe, 900-1100

My research interests are broad, but in recent years I have been increasingly focused on documentary evidence: single-sheet charters, cartularies, and legalistic texts. I approach charters not as corollaries to narrative works, but as literary constructions in their own right. As a member of the MUSLIVE team, I am particularly interested in how developments in documentary practice might inform or be informed by our understanding of medieval music, its performance and reception.

Teaching

I have designed and taught courses covering diverse aspects of early medieval history at the Freie Universitat Berlin, University of Durham and the University of Cambridge. I have led master classes at graduate level at the University of Sheffield, and acted as second supervisor for a PhD dissertation on kinship in early medieval England. I have experience delivering one-to-one teaching covering Scandinavian, European and British early medieval history as well as Old English language and literature.

Selected Publications

• 'Changing Worlds: Local Priests in the Latin West, 900-1050', co-authored monograph with Steffen Patzold, Bastiaan Waagmeester, and Charles West, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, 2024.
• ‘Local Priests and their Siblings c. 900–c. 1100: The Documentary Evidence’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 23 (2023), pp. 267-294.
• 'Æthelflaed and Female Power in Tenth-Century Europe’, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England, edited by Rebecca Hardie and Donald Scragg† (2023)
• ‘The Scabini in Historiographical Perspective’, History Compass 18 (2020), 11pp.
• 'After Empire: Using and Not Using the Past', ed. Sarah Greer, Alice Hicklin and Stefan Esders, Routledge (2019)
• ‘Aitire, 人質, тали, όμηρος, رھن, obses: Hostages, Political Instability, and the Writing of History c. 900–1050 CE’, Medieval Worlds 10, pp. 151–76.