Director of Studies in Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic
Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic
External DoS
All my Murray Edwards students love being at the college, and it’s not hard to see why: the college’s commitment to women’s education is second to none, and it looks after its students really well. It also has beautiful gardens, and friendly and supportive students, fellows and staff
Degrees
MA PhD
Awards
American Council of Learned Societies Collaborative Fellowship, 2016–17, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library residency, 2017.
Research Interests
Social and economic history of early medieval England, especially medicine, diet and food production, and monastic sign language
Biography
I have recently retired from teaching manuscript studies and other medieval subjects at Birkbeck College in London, and am also an affiliated lecturer in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge, where I teach Anglo-Saxon history and manuscript studies. I’m Director of Studies in ASNaC at Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish Colleges, and a senior member at Newnham. Having been a ‘non-standard’ student myself (I returned to education at the age of 29 after working as an agricultural labourer), I’m very keen to encourage people who see themselves as ‘not the Cambridge type’. I’m currently working on a research project on the making and meaning of bread in early medieval England with Professor Martha Bayless, and editing one of the oldest medical texts in English with Dr Christine Voth.
Publications
1991 (rev. edn 1996) Monasteriales indicia: The Old English Monastic Sign Language, Anglo-Saxon Books
2004 Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England, Tempus
2006 with Anke Timmermann and Nick Jardine, The Body as Instrument, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
2010 with Jennifer Rampling and Nick Jardine, Recipes for Disaster, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge
2011 with Clare Pilsworth, Special Issue: ‘Medieval Medicine: Theory and Practice’, Social History of Medicine 24.1
2014 with Rosamond Faith, Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming, Oxford University Press