Confabulating with Prof Katherine French

Prof. French is J. Frederick Hoffman Professor of History at the University of Michigan (USA). She is a specialist in the history of women, gender and sexuality of the European Middle Ages and early modern period. Prof. French is the author of, among many other publications, monographies People of the Parish (Philadelphia, 2001) and Good Women of the Parish (Philadelphia, 2008).

Her newest book “Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London: Consumption and Domesticity After the Plague” can be bought:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0812253051/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_XAM1BZ1YA0JPB9GJ1SZ9

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9780812253054?gC=5a105e8b&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4bbY65bn9QIVCertCh19aQOyEAQYASABEgL6mfD_BwE

https://wordery.com/household-goods-and-good-households-in-late-medieval-london-katherine-l-french-9780812253054/GB?currency=GBP>rck=true&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4bbY65bn9QIVCertCh19aQOyEAQYAyABEgJWjfD_BwE

Katherine L. French offers an original and convincing hypothesis about a distinctive mercantile and artisanal culture that is not merely emulative of elite consumption practices, but rather innovative and adaptive. Throughout, she explores the relationship between gender, 'stuff, ' and the lifeways and rituals associated with household work, food, and childbirth. More broadly, she makes a powerful contribution to wider historical and sociological discussions about the relationship between people and their things.

Confabulating with Prof GIORA STERNBERG

Associate Professor of Early Modern History

Hertford College

He began his academic studies in Tel-Aviv University and came to Oxford for a DPhil in History in 2005. He was then a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2009 to 2012, when He took up his current position at the Faculty of History and at Hertford College.

Research Interests:

His research and publications to date have largely focused on two broad themes at the intersection among political, social, and cultural history: symbolic interaction and writing practices. His first book, Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV (OUP, 2014; pbk ed. 2016; shortlisted for the Royal History Society Gladstone Prize), investigates how and why individuals and groups expressed, shaped, and contested social positions in a variety of contexts, from high ceremonies to everyday routines. For contemporaries, status interaction operated as a key tool for defining and redefining identities, relations, and power; for scholars, it provides a novel lens for understanding early modern action and agency. The two themes combine in his work on correspondence, especially in his Past & Present article from 2009, which has offered a systematic framework for understanding letters as textual and material vehicles of status.

His current main research project, titled 'Writing Acts: The Power of Writing in the Ancien Régime' (under contract with Oxford University Press), explores the direct practical impact of manuscript forms in the social and political arenas. Its first major output appeared in The Journal of Modern History in 2013 (see Publications for further details).

Confabulating with Prof Lesley Smith (Oxford University)

Professor of Medieval Intellectual History; Fellow in Politics

Harris Manchester College

Research Interests

Medieval Intellectual History

The Bible in the Middle Ages

Medieval Manuscripts

She works on the medieval Bible, as both a physical and intellectual object. This ranges from close technical work with manuscripts of Bibles, biblical commentary, theology and pastoralia, to the exposition of commentary and theology, to investigation of the intellectual milieu of the schools in which the Bible was studied – the people and the products of this early university system, from the twelfth century onwards. In particular, She explores the two-way link between the manuscript evidence and the intellectual evidence of these early schools – in modern terms, how technology affects what we learn and know, and vice versa. The study of the Bible has also led her to contribute to the study of medieval Jewish-Christian scholarship and relations.

She currently supervise Masters students in the fields: Medieval intellectual history, widely defined; history of exegesis, biblical studies and theology; history of the university.

She is a regular supervisor for MSt Medieval Studies and MST Medieval History.

Semanas Temáticas

Com:

Luis Albuquerque e Carlos Barbosa

Convidado Especial:

Coronel Luis Albuquerque

Confabulating with Dr Hannah Skoda

I work on the cultural and social history of the later Middle Ages.

I blog about what I do at ideasnowandthen.blogspot.co.uk and https://historyformychildren.com/

My interests lie principally in the social and cultural history of the later Middle Ages: hitherto, I have focused mainly on France, but I am now working comparatively with material from late medieval England, Italy and Germany. I am particularly interested in constructions of deviance; nostalgia; and legalism in this period, and enjoy collaborations with anthropologists and literary scholars.

Research Interests

History of nostalgia

History of misbehaviour, particularly amongst medieval students

History of late medieval slavery

My first book focused on popular violence in later medieval northern France. I worked on the interconnections between different forms of violence, from tavern brawls to domestic violence to urban uprisings, and looked at legal and cultural constructions of 'deviance', and the role of emotions in provoking outbursts of brutality.

My current research focuses on nostalgia in the later Middle Ages. The fourteenth century is often labelled as a century of catastrophe. A fairer assessment describes profound socio-economic, cultural and political changes which had the potential to transform ways of thinking. Many contemporaries responded in profoundly nostalgic terms, harking back to ‘the good old days’, whether the time of their grandparents, or a more nebulous lost golden age. My work examines nostalgia across the social spectrum. Recent anthropologists and philosophers highlight the counter-intuitively hopeful aspect of such an attitude. In many ways, a cross-cultural concept, it was articulated in powerful, lyrical and often subversive ways in the fourteenth century.

I also work on the misbehaviour of fifteenth-century students at the universities of Oxford, Paris and Heidelberg. Drawing on criminological models, my research examines the relationship between the negative stereotypes imposed upon students by a variety of commentators and observers, and the ways in which the students negotiated those stereotypes in their actual misbehaviour. The source material ranges from student poems and letters, to sermons and legal material.

Violence and conflict are obviously of great contemporary relevance, as well as essential to an understanding of the complexities of medieval society. Disentangling the relationships between what people did, what they said they did, and what other people said about these actions is extremely challenging, but can substantially deepen and nuance our understanding.

Further interests include Joan of Arc's emotional world; the history of sufficiency; and the legalism of property and ownership, particularly in the context of medieval slavery. Late medieval slavery is the more unsettling and often un-acknowledged underside of the Renaissance: I am interested in recovering the stories and experiences of slaves. Their humanity continues to resonate across the centuries through the surviving legal material.

Confabulating with Dr Sloan Mahone

Associate Professor of the History of Medicine

Faculty of History | Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Dr Mahone specializes in the history of psychiatry and the psychological sciences in Africa. I have extensive experience in East, Southern and Central Africa, dating back to the Peace Corps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). Her recent research has focussed on East Africa, particularly Kenya and Zanzibar. Her current project deals extensively with photography and visual sources, particularly related to neurology and psychiatry. She also teaches and supervises in the history of Global Psychiatry; the Psychology of Religion; and Gender and Sexuality.

Research Interests

History of Medicine and Psychiatry

History of Photography

Psychology of Religion

At present, She is completing a project on the history of psychiatry and photography in late colonial Kenya. The monograph looks at the turmoil of 1950s Kenya as told through a unique photographic collection taken by a Canadian psychiatrist who ran the mental hospital in Nairobi during the Mau Mau war. This is an unusual approach to a history of psychiatry – opting to follow the trail of a physician photographer as he encountered healers, prophets, patients, and prisoners during the most tumultuous period in Kenya’s modern history. This project has become as much a history of photography as a history of medicine with the use, re-use and misuse of the images themselves an integral part of the story. Her next project, now in the planning and preliminary field site investigation stage, is a comparative history of epilepsy and neurology across Africa.

She currently teaches:

Masters:

Methods and Themes in the History of Medicine

Graduate Research Forum in History of Science, Medicine & Technology

Political Economy of Health and Medicine in Africa

Historical Approaches to the Psychology of Religion

With Peter Bayes

Confabulating with Prof Peter Wilson

Chichele Professor of the History of War

All Souls College

Professor Wilson research interests are centred on the impact of war in European and World Development, as well as the history of the Holy Roman Empire.    

Background

University Academic Fellow, All Souls College (from 2015)

GF Grant Professor of History, University of Hull (from 2007 to 2015)

National War College, Washington DC: participation on 6200 War and Statecraft (September 2011)

MA Summer School and PG workshops, High Point University, North Carolina, USA (June-August 2011)

Visiting Fellow, Excellence Cluster, University of Münster, Germany (January 2011)

Professor of Early Modern History, University of Sunderland (from 2001 to 2006)

Reader in Early Modern European History, University of Sunderland (from 1998 to 2001)

Lecturer in Early Modern European History, University of Newcastle (from 1994 to 1998)

Lecturer in Modern European History, University of Sunderland (from 1990 to 1993)

Research Interests

History of war in wider European and world development from the seventeenth century to around 1900Early modern German history, particularly the political, military, social, and cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire between 1495 and 1806

Teaching

War in seventeenth to nineteenth century world historySocial, cultural, political or military history of German-speaking EuropeEuropean history 1500-1800

Research awards and grants

European Research Council Advanced Grant award (2018-23) for the European Fiscal-Military System 1530-1870: https://fiscalmilitary.history.ox.ac.uk/.Holy Roman Empire named one of the Best Books of 2016 by The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and Waterstones.'The causes of the Thirty Years War 1618-48' named one of the English Historical Review’s '35 most respected articles' (2011).Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award for Europe’s Tragedy (2011).Europe’s Tragedy named Paperback of the Week by the Sunday Times, 11.7.10 (2010).Europe’s Tragedy named a Book of the Year by the New Statesman and The Atlantic, a Best History Book of the Year by The Independent, and a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

(2009).

With Noemie Lopian and Derek Niemann

Bruno Carvalho

Licenciado em História

Mestrado em História Contemporânea com especialização em colonialismo português

Curso Intensivo para a gestão de dos de investigação

Publicou o seu livro “política e sociedade colonial branca no sul de Angola: o caso das terras altas da Huíla (1958-1975)”

Estudante do Mestrado em Economia com especialização em Economia Financeira

Rodrigo Vaz

Licenciado em História pela FLUC

Atualmente a tirar o mestrado em ensino em história na mesma instituição

Publicou o seu livro em Abril de 2021 “Memórias de guerra: como fazer história a partir de quem a viveu?”