The Royal Studies Podcast

This episode, hosted by Charlotte McCrory, explores the Woodville family who played such a prominent role in late fifteenth century English politics. Historians Danielle Burton, Lynda Pigeon and Kavita Mundan Finn explore the Woodvilles from their early origins in 1066, through to the height of their political power and prominence in the fifteenth century. 

Guest Bios

Danielle Burton is a historian, author, heritage worker, and history blogger. She has a First in History and an MA in Public History and Heritage, both from the University of Derby. Her first history book, a biography on Anthony Woodville, brother-in-law of Edward IV, entitled Anthony Woodville: Sophisticate or Schemer was published in February 2024. She currently works as a history speaker, tour guide and archive assistant.

• Facebook- Danielle Burton
• Instagram- @voyagerofhistory
• Bluesky- @princessburton.bsky.social
• Blog- https://voyagerofhistory.wordpress.com 
• Substack- Danielle Burton, Historian, https://voyagerofhistory.substack.com/ 

Lynda Pigeon earned a PhD from Southampton gained in 2012 as a mature student. Her thesis was on the Reputation of the Woodvilles which was published in 2019 by Fonthill as 'Brought up of Nought' a History of the Woodville Family. She has published a number of articles on the Woodvilles including: 

• 'Antony Wydevile, Family Friends and Affinity Part 1’ The Ricardian, vol. 15, 2005 
• ‘Part 2’ The Ricardian, vol. 16 2006
• ‘A Family “Made by Maryage”: Sir Richard Wydevile and Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, no. 62, 2009
• ‘A Strange Marriage: Jacquetta Wydevile and John Lord Strange’, The Ricardian, vol. 27, 2017
• ‘An Aristocratic Brass in Late Fifteenth-Century England’ Monumental Brass Society, vol. 19, pt. 4, 2017
• 'Ties That Bind: Cecily Bonville, the Nevilles, Lord Hastings and the Wydeviles' Ricardian Vol 30 2020
• 'Anne of York and her Loyal Yorkist: Sir Thomas St Ledger (ex. 1483)' The Ricardian vol 33, 2023.

She currently volunteers at St Nicholas Priory, Exeter working with a small group of researchers on the history of the Priory post Reformation. Lynda also manage a small group of transcribers for Friends of Lydiard Park, Swindon, transcribing PCC wills relating to people from the parishes of Lydiard Millicent and Lydiard Tregoze and members of the St.John family who owned Lydiard, these are entered on the Lydiard Archive website  

Dr. Kavita Mudan Finn (she/her) is an independent scholar who has published widely on medieval and early modern literature, Shakespeare, popular medievalism, and fan/reception studies. Since completing her PhD in 2010, she taught literature, history, and gender studies at a range of universities, most recently in the Literature Section at MIT in 2019-2020. She works as a freelance editor and indexer, and is writing a biography of the fifteenth-century English queen Elizabeth Woodville when not managing a two-child, two-dog chaos train in the woods.

• Bluesky: KVMFinn.bsky.social
• Instagram: melusinelafee18  though I’m very much a lurker here)
• Website: https://kvmfinn.wordpress.com/

Non-fiction 

• Joanna Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens (Oxford, 2004) and her bio of Cecily Neville from 2017
• Thomas Penn, The Brothers York: A Royal Tragedy (2016)
• Christine Weightman, Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess (Amberley, 2009)
• Danielle Burton, Anthony Woodville: Sophisticate or Schemer (Amberley, 2024)
• Susan Higginbotham, The Woodvilles (2013)
• Annette Carson, Richard III: Maligned King (2009)
• Sarah Gristwood, Women Behind the Wars of the Roses (2013)
• Lynda Pigeon, Brough up of Nought (Fonthill, 2019)

Fiction 

• The amours of Edward IV (anonymous, 1700) - https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_the-amours-of-edward-the_marana-giovanni-paolo_1700
• Rosemary Hawley Jarman, The King’s Grey Mare (1973) 
• Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendour (1988)
• Reay Tannahill, The Seventh Son (2002) 
• Emma Darwin, A Secret Alchemy (2009) 
• Anne Easter Smith, Daughter of York (2008)
• Anne Easter Smith, King's Grace (2009)

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre chats with three historians about the lives of three daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England: Matilda, duchess of Saxony, Leonor, queen of Castile and Joanna, queen of Sicily and later Countess of Toulouse. We discuss their relationship with their parents and with one another and the pros and cons of being a Plantagenet princess. 

Guest Bios:

Dr José Manuel Cerda is associate professor of medieval history, founder and director of the Humanities Lab at Universidad San Sebastian (Chile). Author of the very recent Leonor of England, The Plantagenet queen of Castile, he is regularly consulted by local and international press on historical issues. 

Follow José on Instagram: @joecerda79 

Dr Catherine Hanley is a freelance historian, writer and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society who writes books on medieval history for the trade press. Among her recent works is Lionessheart: The Life and Times of Joanna Plantagenet, which was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Non-Fiction Crown in 2025. 

Dr Jitske Jasperse is a Tenured Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. From 2018-2022 she was assistant professor of medieval art history at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Driven by questions concerning why and how people engage with artefacts, both precious and mundane, Jitske has a particular interest in the relationship between material culture and gender. This was explored in her monograph Medieval Women, Material Culture, and Power: Matilda Plantagenet and her Sisters (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2020). Also in Open Access (free download), Jitske published a number of articles dealing with Matilda Plantagenet and her sisters:

- Jitske Jasperse, “With This Ring: Forming Plantagenet Family Ties,” in Relations of Power: Women’s Networks in the Middle Ages, eds. Emma O. Bérat, Rebecca Hardie and Irina Dumitrescu (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2021), 67-84.

- Jitske Jasperse, “Matilda of Saxony’s Luxury Objects in Motion: Salving the Wounds of Conflict” in Moving Women, Moving Objects 300-1500, eds. Tracy Chapman Hamilton and Mariah Proctor-Tiffany (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 83-104.

- Jitske Jasperse, “Visualizing Dynastic Desire: The Twelfth-Century Gospel Book of Henry and Matilda,” Studies in Iconography 39 (2018), 135-166.

- Jitske Jasperse, “Matilda, Leonor and Joanna: The Plantagenet Sisters and the Display of Dynastic Connections through Material Culture,” Journal of Medieval History 43, no. 4 (2017), 523-547.

- Jitske Jasperse, “A Coin Bearing Testimony to Duchess Matilda as Consors Regni,” Haskins Society Journal 26 (2014 appeared in 2015), 169-190.

Jitske publishes regular updates about her research on LinkedIn: 

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Elizabeth Norton and Valerie Schutte about their new books for the Lives of Royal Women series on Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. We discuss the surprising facts they encountered in their research which gave them new perspectives on these queens and the myths and tropes about their lives that they want to change.

If you are in the UK and a member of Historic Royal Palaces, you can catch both authors discussing their new books at Hampton Court Palace on 12 October 2026. Click here for more information and details.

Guest Bios:

Elizabeth Norton is an historian, focusing on queenship and the Tudor period. She has degrees from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and a PhD from King's College London, where she has also taught. Jane Seymour: Patronage, Material Culture and Image Crafting is her first monograph, while she has also published a number of peer reviewed articles. She is interested in public history and is the author of Women Who Ruled the World: 5000 Years of Female Monarchy (Footnote, 2025) and Lives of Tudor Women (Head of Zeus, 2016). She is active on social media as @ENortonHistory

Valerie Schutte is a historian of Tudor England, with a particular focus on royal women and book history. She has published three monographs: Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion (2015); Princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor and the Gift Book Exchange (2021); and Anne of Cleves: The Historical and Cultural Legacy of a Queen, which was just published with Routledge in July 2026. She has edited or co-edited seven volumes on Mary I, Shakespeare, and queenship. She consulted on the recent Six Lives exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Valerie is currently editing volumes on Tudor myths, Mary I and humanism, adaptations of the Tudors, and the Tudors represented in public and heritage sites. She is currently working on a monograph on books and manuscripts related to Queen Mary I’s 1554-1555 pregnancy. Recent publications include “A 1555 German Gift Book for Queen Mary I,” Journal of the Early Book Society, vol. 28 (2025), 63-81 and The Tudors, Myth, and Memory: Embroidered Truths, Outright Falsehoods, and Popular Belief (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). She is active on Instagram / X as @Tudorqueenship. 

In this episode, host Susannah Lyon-Whaley talks to Ben James about his exciting new book on the female convents of Lisbon, including the royal women who lived in these monastic institutions. 

Ben James is a historian of early modern Portugal and completed his doctoral research at King’s College, London. His thesis was entitled The Female Convents of Lisbon 1640-1750: Economies, Material Culture and Sociability. Most recently, he has worked as a research assistant for the National Palace of Sintra. His first monograph The Female Convents of Lisbon 1640 to 1750 was published by Routledge in June 2026.

For more on royals and nuns, see Magdalena S. Sánchez, The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain (John Hopkins University Press, 1998). 

The mini series within the Royal Studies Podcast on Monarchy & Money is hosted by Charlotte Backerra from the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and Cathleen Sarti from the University of Oxford in the UK. In the Monarchy & Money episodes, they are talking with scholars on why economic questions are important to understand monarchical rule, and how royals are interacting with the economies of their kingdoms and beyond their territories. They are also always happy to hear about research into economic, financial, and business activities of monarchies and dynastic rulers of all kind.

Social Media: facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky: @cathleen-sarti.bsky.social 

Guest Bios:

Jens Ivo Engels has been Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Technical University Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) since 2008. In addition to the history of monarchy, his research focuses on the history of corruption, the theory and history of technical infrastructures, environmental history and popular culture. His book Die Geschichte der Korruption (The History of Corruption) was published in 2014. He is expected to publish a monograph next year, in collaboration with Ronald Kroeze, entitled “The Everlasting Fight Against Corruption in Modern Europe”. A monograph on the political significance of the German rock musician Wolfgang Niedecken in the late 20th century has just been published as Rock und Politik (Böhlau, 2026). His dissertation thesis was devoted to the public image of French kings in the early 18th century: Königsbilder. Sprechen, Singen und Schreiben über den französischen König in der ersten Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Bouvier, 2000).

Sarah Deck is a PhD candidate at TU Darmstadt, and a research associate in the project on Monarchy and corruption debates. In her Dissertation, she examines the history of monarchies in Germany, UK and France around 1900 from the persepective of public corruption debates. She holds a Bachelor in History and German Language and Literature and a Master in Global History from the university in Heidelberg, and has studied at the University of St Andrews.  
 Previously - and still a research interest - she worked on migration history, focussing on so called "guest workers" from Yugoslavia, focussing on Yugoslavian Clubs in a small German town.

Markus Horbach is a PhD candidate and research associate as the Technical University of Darmstadt since 2024. He is currently working in the Project “Monarchie und Korruptionsdebatten im langen 19. Jahrhundert“, supervised by Jens Ivo Engels. Prior to this, he earned his master’s degree in history at the University of Osnabrück. His current research focuses on public discourse and debates regarding corruption as well as monarchical critique in Germany, England and France in the so called Sattelzeit, 1750 to 1850.

Mentioned Works:

Project website (in English): 

Previous Episodes of the Monarchy & Money series:

02 January 2026: Katia Wright (Winchester) on The Queen’s Lands – English Queens of the 14th Century
16 January 2026: Veronika Hyden-Hanscho (Klagenfurt) on Revenues of Habsburg Nobility in the Long 18th Century
30 January 2026: Fabian Persson (Linnaeus University, Kalmar and Växjö) on Court Economy in Sweden

The mini series within the Royal Studies Podcast on Monarchy & Money is hosted by Charlotte Backerra from the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and Cathleen Sarti from the University of Oxford in the UK. In the Monarchy & Money episodes, they are talking with scholars on why economic questions are important to understand monarchical rule, and how royals are interacting with the economies of their kingdoms and beyond their territories. They are also always happy to hear about research into economic, financial, and business activities of monarchies and dynastic rulers of all kind.

Social Media: facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky: @cathleen-sarti.bsky.social 

Guest Bio: 

Dries Raeymaekers  teaches Early Modern History at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). His research explores the political culture of early modern Europe, with a particular focus on the history of monarchy, dynastic politics, and court society in the Western European context. 

He has held a Fulbright Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Historical Research (London), the Centre Roland Mousnier (Paris-Sorbonne), and the Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

Dries is the author of a prize-winning dissertation on the court of Brussels in the early 17th century, which has been published as One Foot in the Palace: The Habsburg Court of Brussels and the Politics of Access in the Reign of Albert and Isabella, 1598–1621 (Leuven University Press, 2013). He is also the co-editor, with René Vermeir and José Eloy Hortal, of A Constellation of Courts: The Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555–1665 (Leuven University Press, 2014), and, with Sebastiaan Derks, of The Key to Power? The Culture of Access in Princely Courts, 1450–1750 (Brill, 2016). 

Together with Liesbeth Geevers, he is co-editing the early modern volume in the forthcoming Bloomsbury Cultural History of Monarchy series. With Marc Jaffré, he is currently preparing an edited volume on working conditions at early modern courts.

Bluesky: @driesraey.bsky.social 

**

Marc W. S. Jaffré is a historian specialising in the histories of princely courts, peace building and hospitality in early modern France and Tokugawa Japan. He is an honorary fellow of Durham University, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a chercheur associé of the Centre Roland Mousnier (Sorbonne Université), and the Deputy Chair of the European Branch of the Society for Court Studies. He is the author of The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610–1643 (Oxford, 2025) and the co-editor of Marginalized Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, forthcoming with Brepols in 2027. He has been awarded a Marie Curie (MSCA) global postdoctoral fellowship by the European Commission for the project 'HOST-FJ. Hospitality in Early Modern France and Tokugawa Japan: Concept and Practice'. The project will start in September and is co-hosted by the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento and Nichibunken in Kyoto. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen on the project 'Building Peace: Transitional Justice in Early Modern France' and a lecturer at Durham University, the University of Oxford (Balliol College) and the University of St Andrews.

Previous Episodes of the Monarchy & Money series:

02 January 2026: Katia Wright (Winchester) on The Queen’s Lands – English Queens of the 14th Century
16 January 2026: Veronika Hyden-Hanscho (Klagenfurt) on Revenues of Habsburg Nobility in the Long 18th Century
30 January 2026: Fabian Persson (Linnaeus University, Kalmar and Växjö) on Court Economy in Sweden

In this episode, host Megan Barber interviews Dr Owen Emmerson about the exhibition 'Capturing A Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn' at Hever Castle and the memory of this ever fascinating Tudor queen.

Guest Bio 

Dr Owen Emmerson is a social and cultural historian, author, broadcaster, and historical consultant. He is Assistant Curator at Hever Castle in Kent and recently served as a historical consultant for the BBC’s adaptation of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. Owen has appeared in numerous television documentaries and specialises in the social and cultural history of the sixteenth century. 

Publications: 

• Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn (2026) 
• Holbein’s Hidden Gem: Rediscovering Thomas Cromwell’s Lost Book (2023) 
• Catherine and Anne: Queens, Rivals, Mothers (2023) 
• Becoming Anne: Connections, Culture, Court (2022) 
• The Boleyn's of Hever Castle (2021) 

Find Owen on Social media: @drowenemmerson (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X)

In this episode, host Megan Barber interviews Dr Holly Marsden, assistant curator of research at Historic Royal Palaces, on her research on Mary II of England--a fascinating yet often overlooked regnant queen.

Guest Bio:

Holly Marsden is an assistant curator of research at Historic Royal Palaces, who focuses predominantly on the Queen’s State Apartments at Kensington Palace. She completed her PhD in 2024 under a collaboration between HRP and the University of Winchester, and her thesis examined the personal and public identities of Queen Mary II. During her PhD, Holly worked on the exhibitions 'Crown to Couture' at Kensington Palace and 'Inspiring People' at the National Portrait Gallery. Her research interests include the art, architectural, and material culture of the seventeenth century, especially Anglo-Dutch cultural exchange and relationships. Holly’s work also explores the histories of women loving women and LGBTQ+ history more broadly. In September 2026, she will be the Conrad Whelan 42 fellow at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.  

Publications  

Marsden, H., ‘A global “Pattern to Woman-kind”? Queen Mary II on commemorative ceramics in England, the United Provinces, China, and Colonial America’, The English Ceramic Circle Transactions (September, 2025). 

In this episode, we have a conversation between the four co-authors of a new textbook in the field of royal studies, Exploring Monarchy in Medieval Europe 1000-1500, Elena (Ellie) Woodacre, Lucinda Dean, Simon Lambe and Patrik Pastrnak. They discuss the challenges that they faced in the composition of the book, the intended audience and use for the textbook and the contributions of colleagues in the field which enabled them to achieve a wide ranging survey of monarchical practices across the continent. 

Guest Bios:

Elena Woodacre is Reader in Renaissance History at the University of Winchester. She is a specialist in queenship and royal studies and has published extensively in this area.

• See Elena's staff profile page
• Queens and Queenship

Lucinda H.S. Dean is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for History, UHI. Her research expertise includes medieval and early modern ritual, ceremony, kingship, material culture, gender, and the life cycle.

• See Lucinda's staff profile page
• Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, c.1214-c.1543

Simon Lambe is Associate Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His academic background is in gentry and royal relations in late medieval and early Tudor England.

• See Simon's staff profile page

Patrik Pastrnak is Associate Professor at Palacký University, Olomouc. He specialises in royal weddings, wedding journeys, queenship, and rulership in late medieval and early modern Central Europe and Italy.

• See Patrik's academia.edu profile page
• Configuring Bohemian Queenship Project (and project Instagram account)

In this episode, host Susannah Lyon-Whaley inteviews Lauren Working on her new book, A Golden World, which is released this month (June 2026). A Golden World illuminates how the Americas became a visible and material presence in English culture, through a range of unexpected objects: from tobacco leaves strewn in playhouses to a boy wearing a pearl earring. Award-winning historian Lauren Working presents an altogether new history of the ‘golden age’ of 16th-century England, that considers the desire for power, land and resources in the first era of colonization, alongside the craft and labour of those in the Americas who contributed to the English Renaissance as we know it.

Guest Bio: Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Studies at the University of York. Her research focuses on literary sociability, material culture, and colonialism in the age of Shakespeare. Her academic work includes The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and a new introduction to The Tempest for Oxford World's Classics (2024). A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England (Faber & Faber, 2026) is her first trade book.

Lauren’s social media:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-working-7344ab45/
• Instagram: @drlaurenworking