CMS Staff Research Interests

Dr Marianne Ailes, Senior Lecturer in French
(Marianne.Ailes@bristol.ac.uk)
Marianne Ailes' research interests are in Medieval French literature, in particular the (frequently politically engaged) chansons de geste and early vernacular chronicles. She is actively involved in editing and translating as well as interpretative studies. Much of her research is focussed on literature of the crusades, the perception and depiction of the Other, either the Saracen or the female Other, and intertextual readings of texts. She has co-edited, Ambroise, History of the Holy War / Estoire de la guerre sainte, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003), and co- translated, Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 2 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003), both with Malcolm Barber. Her publications include, The Song of Roland: on Absolutes and Relative Values (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). She is currently working on Charlemagne in insular texts. She is General Editor of Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures.

Professor Elizabeth Archibald, Professor of Medieval Literature
(E.Archibald@bristol.ac.uk)
Elizabeth Archibald's research focusses on medieval romance, the Arthurian legend, the representation of women in medieval literature, the reception of classical literature in the Middle Ages, medieval Latin literature, Middle Scots literature and macaronic literature. Among her publications are Apollonius of Tyre(1991) and A Companion to Malory (1996, edited with A.S.G. Edwards). Most recently she has published Incest and the Medieval Imagination (2001). She is currently working on baths and bathing in medieval literature and society.

Professor Judith H. Bryce, Professor Emerita of Italian
(J.H.Bryce@bristol.ac.uk)
Judith Bryce has research and teaching interests in the modern period and in the Renaissance. In relation to the latter, she has published on cultural production in mid-sixteenth-century ducal Florence, notably in the ambit of the FlorentineAcademy. More recently her interest has shifted to cultural, social and gender issues in the Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici, with publications on women's writing and women's literacy.

Professor John A. Burrow, FBA, Emeritus Professor of English
John Burrow is director of the Early English Text Society; author of A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Ricardian Poetry, Medieval Writers and their Work, Essays on Medieval Literature, The Ages of Man, Langland`s Fictions. Editor of English Verse 1300-1500 and (with T. Turville-Petre) A Book of Middle English. He is the co-editor (with Ian Wei), of Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (2000).

Jon Cannon, Part-time lecturer in History of Art
Jon is an art historian with a strong interest in the social context of medieval religious architecture and associated arts. This includes wider theoretical issues concerning architectural styles and how they are formed and understood; close attention to the minute details of the fabric of medieval buildings is the ballast essential for such explorations. His main academic specialism is the art and architecture of medieval Bristol, especially the great fourteenth-century works at St Mary Redcliffe and St Augustine's (now the cathedral). These buildings pose with unusual urgency the key questions concerning the nature of style, patronage, use and meaning in medieval art. Jon also works on the relationship between medieval religious institutional life and medieval architecture, which he is developing as a PhD thesis drawn from his recent book, 'The Great English cathedrals and the world that made them' (Constable, 2007). He has published on cultural dimensions of the Wiltshire landscape in which he lives, and in his capacity as a writer and journalist, on similar issues in parts of the Far East. He was the presenter of 'How to build a cathedral' (BBC, 2008). Forthcoming publications include a major book on Bristol cathedral, co-edited with Beth Williamson, and an article on the architecture of the collegiate church at Wesbury-upon-Trym, part of a volume for the Bristol Record Society.

Dr Fernando Cervantes, Reader in History
(F.Cervantes@bristol.ac.uk)
Fernando Cervantes has research interests in the intellectual and religious history of late medieval and early modern Europe, especially Spain and Spanish America. He has published numerous articles on the Spanish presence in America. He is author of The Devil in the New World: the impact of diabolism in New Spain(1994) and co-editor (with Nicholas Griffiths) of Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and native religions in colonial America(1999).

Professor Gillian Clark, Professor Emerita of Ancient History
(Gillian.Clark@bris.ac.uk)
Gillian Clark's research interests include gender history and Platonist philosophy in late antiquity and patristics. Publications include commentary on Augustine, Confessions 1-4 (1993); translations of Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Life (1989) and of Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals (2000); Women in Late Antiquity (1993), Christianity and Roman Society (2004), and A Very Short Introduction to Late Antiquity (fc 2011). She is co-editor of Translated Texts for Historians 300-800, and of the monograph series Oxford Early Christian Studies. Her work in progress is a collaborative commentary on Augustine's City of God. She is Chair of Directors for the Oxford Patristic Conference 2011.

Dr James Clark, Reader in Medieval History
(James.Clark@bristol.ac.uk)
James Clark's research focuses on the ecclesiastical and intellectual history of England in the later Middle Ages and in particular on the life and learning of English monasteries in the period between the Black Death and the Dissolution. His publications include The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (2005), A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and His Circle, c.1350-1440 (2004) and (as editor) The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (2002). He is currently completing a book on the Dissolution of the Monasteries for Yale University Press. He welcomes applications for research on any aspect of medieval monasticism and on themes in the ecclesiastical, cultural and intellectual history of England in the period 1350-1540.

George Ferzoco, Research Fellow in Medieval Religious Culture
(g.ferzoco@bristol.ac.uk)
George Ferzoco examines aspects of medieval education and propaganda, and works on bibliography, codicology and manuscript history. As Vice-President of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society, he has published on sermons for saints’ feasts, and he is the UK representative on the international team preparing an electronic thesaurus of Jacopo da Varazze’s sermons. His Massa Marittima Mural (Florence, 2004) received prizes from the Medieval Feminist Forum and the Regional Council of Tuscany. He is preparing an edition of texts on the canonization of Peter of the Morrone (Pope Celestine V). He is founder of the medieval-religion discussion list, and co-edits (with Carolyn Muessig) Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture. He prepares the chapter on Medieval Latin for The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies. He is happy to collaborate in supervising students interested intopics noted above.

Dr Jane Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in English
(Jane.Griffiths@bristol.ac.uk)
Jane Griffiths is interested in late medieval and early modern poetry and poetics, ideas of literary authority, and the reception of medieval works in the Renaissance. She has a particular interest in John Skelton and Stephen Hawes. (Her monograph John Skelton and Poetic Authority: Defining the Liberty to Speak was published by Oxford University Press in 2006). Jane is now working on a study of glossing practices from the late fourteenth century through to the early decades of print. She is also a practising poet.

Dr Anke Holdenried, Lecturer in Historical Studies
(a.holdenried@bristol.ac.uk)
Anke Holdenried specialises in cultural and intellectual history and is particularly interested in medieval prophetic traditions. She is the author of The Sibyl and Her Scribes. Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin Sibylla Tiburtina c.1050-1500 (Ashgate, 2006), which explores medieval apocalyptic traditions and modern assumptions about the function and use of prophetic texts in their historical context through�the detailed study of one of medieval Europe’s most popular Last-Emperor prophecies. Her current project concerns ‘prophetia’ as a medieval concept and considers the diverse and changing contexts of prophecy, especially outside the debates of the later Middle Ages about gender or authority.

Dr Emma Hornby, Lecturer in Music
(emma.hornby@bristol.ac.uk)
Emma Hornby's research focuses on early medieval music, particularly questions of orality, transmission and compositional planning in chant. She has published articles in the Journal of Musicology and in Plainsong and Medieval Music. Her first monograph, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts: A Case-Study in the Transmission of Western Chant, was published by Ashgate (2002). Her second monograph, Medieval Liturgical Chant and Patristic Exegesis: Words and Music in the Second-Mode Tracts, was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2009. She has also written on the use of silence in plainchant. Emma was awarded an AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Small Grant in 2009/10 to complete a co-authored monograph with Prof Rebecca Maloy (Boulder, Colorado) on Old Hispanic chant, a project also involving a series of outreach events (for further details, see http://www.bristol.ac.uk/music/unimusicmaking/sc.html). Emma was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2009.

Professor Mark Horton, FSA, Professor in Archaeology
(Mark.Horton@bristol.ac.uk)
Mark Horton is a medieval archaeologist with wide ranging interests. His current medieval research includes leading the University excavations of the Saxon Minster site of Berkeley (Goucestershire) and working on a project to identify the remains of Queen Eadgyth (910-946), recently excavated in Magdeburg Cathedral. He is also working on the archaeology of the Bishops Palace at Wells (Somerset), and is writing up excavations from L'Abbaye de Grosbot -  a Cistercian abbey in southwest France. Beyond Europe, his research takes him to the Indian Ocean,  where he works on Islamic port cities, especially on the East African coast, and is completing a major monograph on the archaeology of Zanzibar and Pemba. Other research includes a survey, with the National University of Mongolia, of the upper Kherlen Valley (Eastern Mongolia), a multi-period landscape, with Hunnu, Turkic and Mongol period remains.  Publications include Shanga: an early Islamic trading community on the East African coast (1996), The Swahili (2001) and numerous articles.  He is also one of the presenters of the BAFTA award-winning series, Coast (BBC2)

Dr Evan Jones, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History
(evan.jones@bristol.ac.uk)
Evan Jones works on fifteenth-seventeenth century maritime history, particularly in relation to Bristol. His current research interests lie in three main areas: Bristol's fifteenth-sixteenth century voyages of discovery, the illicit trade of early modern England and Irish overseas trade and economic development in the sixteenth century. He welcomes proposals on the social or economic aspects of Bristol's medieval or early modern past and is happy to supervise work on the broader maritime history of these periods. He is currently the lead or co-supervisor for seven research students - all of whom are working within his broad area of research interests.

Professor Pamela King. Professor of Medieval Studies and Director of the Centre
(fapmk@bristol.ac.uk)
Pamela King's research interests are interdisciplinary, and focus chiefly on late medieval English culture, particularly theatre and drama. She was elected President of the Societie Internationale pour l'etude du Theatre Medieval (2001-04) and has also been a Council Member of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society. She has co-edited editions of both the York and Coventry mystery plays, and has written numerous articles on civic religious drama. Her monograph,The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006) won the 2007 David Bevington Award for the Best New Book in Early Drama Studies. She also publishes on European civic and confraternal festivals more generally, and on medieval tomb sculpture, manuscripts and poetry. She is co-director of York Doomsday Project (www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/yorkdoom/intro.htm), and has a particular interest in the uses of new technologies in research.

Dr Genevieve Liveley, Lecturer in Latin
(G.Liveley@bristol.ac.uk)
Dr Liveley's principal research interests are in Augustan literature, critical theory, and the classical tradition. She is co-editor and contributor to a forthcoming volume on Elegy and Narrativity and author of Ovid: Love Songs - a re-evaluation of the poet's politics, poetics and erotics which assesses the continued relevance and readability of Ovid's work for a twenty-first century audience. She is currently working on two ongoing research projects: one on posthumanism and the classical tradition, and another on time and narrative in Roman elegy. Her other publications include articles and essays on the classical tradition, cyborgs, and chaos theory.

Dr Elena Lombardi, Senior Lecturer in Italian
(Elena.Lombardi@bristol.ac.uk)
Elena Lombardi’s teaching and research interests are Dante, the medieval theory of language, and medieval theories and textual practices of love and desire. Her book, The Syntax of Desire. Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae and Dante (Toronto: 2007) focuses on the intersection between theories of language and theories of desire. She has also published on early Italian poetry (the Sicilian School, Guido Cavalcanti, Francesco Petrarca).

Dr Carolyn Muessig, Reader in Medieval Theology
(C.A.Muessig@bristol.ac.uk)
Carolyn Muessig's research interests include: monastic education and preaching, especially the sermons of Hildegard of Bingen and Jacques de Vitry. She has published editions and translations of the sermons of Jacques de Vitry, and articles on his sermons which discuss chastity and the Cathars.� Her recent publications include Expostiones euangeliorum Sanctae Hildegardis , Co-edited with Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming, 2006). [Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina Continuatio Mediaevalis.] and Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages, Co-edited with Ad Putter (London /New York: Routledge, 2006), also a collection of essays, Medieval Monastic Preaching, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 90 (1998); The Faces of Women in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry: Commentary, Editions and Translations (1999); Medieval Monastic Education [edited with George Ferzoco] (2000); and Sermon, Preacher and Audience in the Middle Ages (2002). She is also co-editor [with Veronica O'Mara] of the journal Medieval Sermon Studies and series co-editor [with George Ferzoco] of Medieval Religion and Culture (Routledge).

Professor Ad Putter, Reader in English Literature
(A.D.Putter@bristol.ac.uk)
Ad Putter works on medieval literature and modern philosophy, medieval romance, the Gawain-poet, editing, Arthurian literature, the alliterative tradition, and comparative literature (English, Dutch, French and Latin). For the MA in Medieval Studies he teaches (amongst other things) codicology, textual criticism, and Arthurian Literature He is currently completing (with coeditor Myra Stokes) an edition of the Works of the Gawain-Poet for the Penguin English Poets Series. Publications include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance, (1995, reprinted 1999); An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet (1996); The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, co-edited with Jane Gilbert (2000), Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages (2007), co-edited with Carolyn Muesssig, Studies in the Metre of Alliterative Verse (2007), co-authored with Judith Jefferson and Myra Stokes.

Dr Brendan Smith, Reader in Medieval History
(Brendan.Smith@bristol.ac.uk)
Brendan Smith works on the history of Britain and Ireland in the later Middle Ages, with special reference to the English colony in Ireland. He has edited the Registers of two Irish archbishops: The Register of Milo Sweteman, Archbishop of Armagh, 1361-1380 (1997), and The Register of Nicholas Fleming, Archbishop of Armagh, 1404-1416 (2003). A monograph, Colonisation and Conquest in Medieval Ireland. The English in Louth, 1170- 1330, was published in 1999, and the same year saw the publication of the edited proceedings of a conference held at Bristol, Britain and Ireland 900-1300. Insular Responses to Medieval European Change. Brendan Smith held a two-year research award from the Economic and Social Research Council in 2002-3, and the fruits of this have just been published as Handbook and Select Calendar of Sources for Medieval Ireland in The National Archives of the United Kingdom. He jointly edited this book with one of his former Ph.D. students, Dr Paul Dryburgh.In 2009 he published an edited festschrift, 'Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Robin Frame', and was also the editor of R.R. Davies, 'Lords and Lordship in the British Isles in the Late Middle Ages'.

Mr Ian P. Wei, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History
(Ian.P.Wei@bristol.ac.uk)
Ian Wei specialises in the intellectual, cultural and social history of Western Europe, c.1000-1300. His research concerns the role of intellectuals in medieval society, and focuses on the political and social views of the masters of theology at the University of Paris in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. He has co-edited (with Rhiannon Purdie and Donald Mowbray) Authority and Community in the Middle Ages (1999), and (with John Burrow) Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (2000).

Dr Beth Williamson, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art
(Beth.Williamson@bristol.ac.uk)
Beth Williamson specialises in the cultural history of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Western Europe. She has particular interests in early Italian, Netherlandish and Bohemian painting, in the relationship between art and devotion (with particular reference to Marian devotion), and in devotional and liturgical practice and performance. She is the co-editor (with Joanna Cannon) of Art, Politics and Civic Religion in Central Italy, c. 1261-c. 1352, (2000) and the author of Christian Art (OUP, 2004). Her most recent book, The Madonna of Humility: development, dissemination and reception, explores the iconography and development of the image of the Virgin seated on the ground, the assimilation and translation of the image between different cultural milieux, and its function and reception. Research enquiries concerning all aspects of late medieval art, especially religious art and architecture, are welcomed.