Sarah Hinds

Thesis

Thesis

Objects, Space, and the Household in Late Medieval Probate Inventories

Supervisor: Jeremy Goldberg

Research

Research

My research interests include late medieval material culture, notions of home and domesticity, the material culture of 'burgeis' houses, and source critical approaches to probate inventories. 

My thesis 'Objects, Space, and the Household in Late Medieval Probate Inventories', will investigate domestic life in late medieval England through the lens of probate inventories. This research aims to critically outline the production and use of inventories registered at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and will advocate for new methodological approaches to these texts.

Taking a novel, qualitative approach to inventories I am examining the use, meaning, and agency of household objects, the differentiation and use of space in late medieval houses, and how different members of the household interacted with these objects and spaces.

This research aims to both broaden and complicate current understandings of late medieval domesticity.

Papers and publications

Papers and publications

• Sarah Hinds, 'Review of Katherine L French, Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London. Consumption and Domesticity after the Plague,' TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 19, no.2 (2022): 128–130.
• Sarah Hinds, 'Crossing Thresholds and Creating Boundaries: A Cultural Itinerary of Chests in Late Medieval England' in, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries, 1000-1700, eds. K. A. Wilson and L. R. Clark (Liverpool University Press) Forthcoming 2022.
• Sarah Hinds, ‘English Medieval Probate Inventories: The Potential of Narratological Approaches,’ Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften: ÖZG 32, no. 3 (2022), 44-65.
• "Through the Keyhole: Looking around Late Medieval Homes using Inventories." BBC History Festival Chester, October 2019.
• "English Medieval Probate Inventories: the Potential of Qualitative Approaches." Inventories as Texts and Artefacts International Workshop, University of Salzburg, September 2019.
• "Domesticity, Privacy and Materiality: the Use of Chests in Late Medieval 'Burgeis' Houses." Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2019
• "Seeking Mobility in Static Texts: Re-animating Chests in Late Medieval Administrative Documents." The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries AHRC Network Workshop, Grosvenor Museum Chester, September 2018.  
• Sarah Hinds, 'Late Medieval Sexual Badges as Sexual Signifiers: A Material Culture Reappraisal,' Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 55, no. 2 (2020): 170-191.

External activities

External activities

Project contributor with The Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe. (https://dalme.org/) Responsible for editing and transcribing English inventories as part of an international team led by the department of History at Harvard University.

Visiting lecturer in the department of History and Archaeology at the University of Chester.