Danielle Park
Lecturer in High Middle Ages

Profile

Biography

Danielle received her PhD in 2013 from Royal University of London. She is an Advance HE Fellow and has taught at the universities of London, Reading, Sheffield, Leicester, and York. Recently she co-organised the 10th Quadrennial Conference for the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Danielle is the Bulletin Editor of the SSCLE.

Research

Overview

Danielle's first book Papal Protection and the Crusader: Flanders, Champagne and the Kingdom of France, 1095-1222 (Boydell and Brewer, 2018) is particularly interested in what happened on the home-front while the crusaders were away. Her work focuses on the development of the papal protection privilege granted to crusaders and their families, and extended over their homes and properties. She examines the crusades’ implications for the families and lands that the crusaders left behind, and assesses the papal and secular measures involved in protecting the crusaders' interests. Her monograph considers the crusaders’ preparations for their departures, the practicality of the papal protection privilege, and the roles of crusaders’ wives and sons as regents.

Danielle has worked extensively on the role of women within the context of the crusades. In 2019 she appeared on BBC’s In Our Time to discuss Queen Melisende of Jerusalem. Her current project is a monograph focused on the reign and partnership of Queen Melisende (r.1131-52 d.1161) and King Fulk of Jerusalem (r.1131-43) for the Rulers of the Latin East series. She recently published a chapter exploring Melisende in public history in The Making of Crusading Heroes and Villains: Engaging the Crusades, Volume Four (Routledge, 2020).

Teaching

Undergraduate

Autumn

• Kingship, Rule and Mythmaking: England 1065-1307 (Histories & Contexts)

Spring

• The Measly Middle Ages? Wretchedness and Relief 1100-1400 (Explorations)
• Disciplines of History 1 (two discussion groups)

Summer

• Explorations projects (linked to the Explorations module above)
• Group Projects (stage 1 module)

Postgraduate

Autumn

• The Medieval Imagination - MA option
• Perspectives on Medieval History - one seminar on core MA module.

Spring

• Punishing the Body - two seminars on this CMS module

Summer

• MA dissertation supervision for History and CMS