About our staff

I grew up in North Yorkshire, where the seeds of my interest in the Middle Ages were probably planted by days out at Fountains Abbey down the road. A few summers spent in the company of the York Archaeological Trust did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm, and I headed north to study Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. I stayed there for five years, then went to the University of Oxford to write a doctoral thesis about imaginary creatures.

I was lucky to be able spend the next few years first as a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford, and then as the Osborn Fellow in Medieval History and Culture at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 2015, I returned to Scotland to join the School of History, Classics and Archaeology here in Edinburgh.

External examiner at Lancaster University (2021–25)

You can find more about my publications and research on hcommons or on academia.edu.

I am also one half of the band Kindly Eyes, and you can hear our music on our bandcamp page.

Summary of research interests

• Britain & Ireland
• Europe
• Scotland

• Comparative & Global History
• Culture
• Ideas
• Language & Literature
• Material Culture
• Medicine, Science & Technology
• Religion
• Society

• Medieval

My research focuses on the social and cultural history of early medieval Europe (c. 500-1100 CE). My work seeks to better understand the ways that early medieval men and women thought about the world in which they lived, and to explore the way that their beliefs, ideas and values changed during the first millennium CE.

My published work deals chiefly with religious culture of the period, and has examined subjects such as beliefs about angels, speculation about the creation of the world, theories about the fate of the dead, and the veneration of saints. My current research seeks to develop new understandings of medieval systems of healing, focusing especially on the place of animals in medieval healing practices, to investigate both the ways in which animals were cared for and the ways that they themselves were implicated in the processes of human medicine.

• Medieval Worlds: A Journey through the Middle Ages (pre-honours)
• The History of Edinburgh: From Din Eidyn to Festival City (pre-honours)
• The Transformation of the Roman World, ca. 300–800: Towards Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (pre-honours)
• The Kings in the North: Scotland in the Early Middle Ages (honours elective)
• Medicine and Health in the early Middle Ages (honours special subject)
• Historical Skills and Methods II (honours pathway on medieval visions of the afterlife)

• Body and Soul in Early Medieval Thought (MSc)
• The Sources of Medieval History (MSc)
• Themes in Scottish Historiography (MSc)

Hayley Boulton, 'The social and cultural contexts of gynaecological texts in the early medieval West, c. 700-1000' (PhD thesis, co-supervising with Dr Zubin Mistry)

Kelli Conley, 'Lay masculinities and male bonding in Anglo-Saxon England, ca. 700-1000' (PhD thesis, co-supervising with Dr Zubin Mistry)

I would welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students who are interested in pursuing further work on any aspect of early medieval social and cultural history, especially in topics related to religion and/or medicine.