Postgraduate research at the CMS

York is one of the very few universities in the world in which interdisciplinary doctoral research in medieval studies is undertaken.

Students can pursue single-discipline PhDs in archaeology, history, literature, and history of art, or interdisciplinary PhDs which draw from two or more disciplinary approaches.

Current interdisciplinary PhD projects and some examples of the range of work undertaken in recent years are listed below.

Entered 2011-12

  • Jennifer Bartlett, "England's Immigrants: 1330-1550"
  • Victoria Flood, "The function of orophecy in medieval Britain, from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Tudors"
  • Brad Kirkland, "Fourteenth-century history of the London Armourer's Company and their involvement in the war in France"
  • Jessica Lee, "The symbiotic relationship between parish elites and less privileged parishioners"
  • Justin Sturgeon, "The display of status, authority and nobility in fifteenth-century manuscripts with specific focus on Flemish manuscript production and the patronage of Louis de Bruges, Lord of Gruuthuse"

Entered 2010-11

  • Hollie Morgan, “The cultural meaning of beds and chambers in late-medieval England”

 Entered 2009-10

  • Lucy Allen, “Reading and Visual Processing in Late-Medieval England”
  • Katharine Bilous, "Heroes in St Albans: the appropriate and use of Thomas Becket and
  • Alexander the Great in vernacular texts produced in St Albans in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."
  •  Holly James-Maddocks, “Collaborative Book Production in Fifteenth-Century London”
  • Jane-Heloise Nancarrow, “Re-used, re-written and re-imagined: Twelfth and thirteenth century appropriation of Roman material culture in the towns of St Albans, Chester and Colchester”

 Entered 2008-9

  • Alison James, “Gentry Masculinity in Fifteenth-Century Yorkshire”
  • Deb Thorpe, “Reading and Writing in the Circle of Sir John Fastolf”
  • William White, “Exile and Return of Anglo-Saxon Kings”

Entered 2007-8

  • Beth Kaneko, “No Two Alike: The Representation of Space in English Local Maps in the Late Middle Ages”
  • Alison Purnell, “Disability in the Later Middle Ages”
  • Els Schröder, “Friendship and Social Networks in late Anglo-Saxon England”

Recently completed PhD projects

  • Helen Killick, “Thomas Hoccleve as poet and clerk”
  • Eleanor McCullough, “English Anchoritic Texts”
  • Windy McKinney, “The transmission and Reception of Bede's Ecclesiastical History in Anglo- Saxon England”
  • Sarah McLoughlin, “Transgression and the Household in Late Medieval England”
  • Henry Bainton, “History and the Written Word in the Angevin Empire (c.1154-c.1200)”
  • Chloe Morgan, “Brynge Hym into my Chapelle: Sacred Space in Middle English Romance
  • Stefania Perring, “The Cathedral Landscape of York: the Minster Close c. 1500-1642”
  • Alice Bennett, “Narratives of Faith and the Construction of Childhood in Later Medieval England”  (MPhil)
  • Luisa Izzi,  "Representing Rome:  the influence of ‘Rome’ on aspects of the public arts of Early Anglo-Saxon England (c.600-800)"
  • Andrew Taubman, "Clergy and Commoners: Interactions between Medieval lergy and Laity in a Regional Context"
  • Helen Birkett, "Cumbrian Vitae of the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries: Text and Context 
  • Sally Bolitho, "Invisible Melodies': Music, Space, Memory and Identity in England, c.1350-1550
  • John Clay, "In the Shadow of Death': Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia, AD 72-754"
  • Cristina Figueredo, "An edition of Richard Coeur de Lion from the London Thornton manuscript"
  • Christine Maddern, "The Northumbrian Name Stones of Early Christian Anglo-Saxon England"

Recent PhD research

  • Small Houses in Later Medieval Norwich and York 
  • Invisible Melodies': Music, Space, Memory and Identity in England, c.1350-1550
  • Materials for the Study of the Cult of St Agnes of Rome in Anglo-Saxon England
  • Kingship Ties in the Viking Diaspora
  • Body-soul debates in English, French and German manuscripts, c.1250-1500"
  • Old Norse Drinking Culture
  • Sculpture and Identity in Viking Age East Anglia
  • Naming the Divine: Designations for the Christian God in Old English Poetry
  • Remembering the Dead in Anglo-Saxon England
  • Sacred Space: Priorities, Perception and Presence of God in Late Medieval Yorkshire Parish Churches
  • The Production and Reception of Military Texts in the Aftermath of the Hundred Years War 
  • The Politics of Mercy: the Royal Pardon in Fourteenth-century England
  • Strangers in Strange Lands: Colonisation and Multiculturalism in the Age of Scandinavian Expansion
  • Writing Fire and the Sword: the Perception and Representation of Viking Violence in Anglo-Saxon England
  • Male Lay Sanctity in Early Twelfth Century England
  • Reading the Stones: the Pictish Monuments on Tarbat Peninsula, Easter Ross
  • Ideology and the Family in Late Medieval York
  • Aristocratic Executions and Burials in England c. 1150-c. 1330: Cultures of Fragmentation
  • The Politics of Youth: the Representation of Young Noblemen in Late-fifteenth and Early-sixteenth Century Interludes
  • Solitude and Sociability: Anchoritic Ideology in Medieval England c. 1160-c. 1450
  • The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476-1586 
  • Pour le bien du Roy et de son Royaume': Burgundian Propaganda under John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, 1405-1419