The Royal Studies Podcast

This episode is an interview with Nadia van Pelt about her new book, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII which came out with OUP in December 2023. In this episode Dr Ellie Woodacre asks the author about the inspiration behind the book, the role of the fool at the Tudor court and about an exciting document that Nadia discovered which sheds new light on Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves.

Guest Bio: Nadia van Pelt is a lecturer at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. She holds a PhD from the University of Southampton, and published her first book with Routledge in 2019. Her research sits on the intersection between literary and cultural history, with a focus on drama, performance, and ritual.

Publications: 
·       Drama in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Playmakers and Their Strategies (Routledge, 2019)

·       Challenging the ‘Ugliness’ of Anne of Cleves, History Today, April 2024

·       Speaking of Kings and Popes under the Shadow of Henry VIII’s Treason Act: Bale’s King Johan, RSJ 8.1(2021)

·       Katherine of Aragon's Deathbed: Why Chapuys Brought a Fool, Early Theatre 24.1 (2021)

·       Royal epistolary courtship in Latin? Arthur Tudor's “love letter” to Katherine of Aragon at the Archivo General de Simancas and Francesco Negri's Ars Epistolandi, Renaissance Studies 38.2 (2024)

·       John Blanke’s Wages: No Business Like Show Business, Medieval English Theatre 44 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805430438.002 [JSTOR or Cambridge Core]

·      Teens and Tudors: The Pedagogy of Royal Studies, RSJ 1.1 (2014)

·      Enter Queen: Metatheatricality and the Monarch on/off Stage, The Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2014)

This episode, hosted by Dr Ellie Woodacre, features another roundtable with members of the Henry on Tour project team--we discuss the progresses of Henry VIII and the big themes of the project including kingship & queenship, logistics, legacy and performance.

About the project: This exciting three-year venture brings together a cross-disciplinary team of scholars and technical specialists from both the academic and heritage sectors to explore, evaluate and reconceptualise Henry VIII’s progresses. Led by Historic Royal Palaces in collaboration with the Universities of York and Newcastle, the main research focus will be on the logistics of Henry’s journeys around his realm and their performance as a spectacle, their significance in demonstrating kingship and queenship, and their legacy for the study and interpretation of the Tudors in schools and at heritage sites. The project will map Henry VIII’s complete itinerary for the first time and the associated landscapes, the routes taken, the venues visited and the palaces, country houses and ecclesiastical institutions that accommodated the royal household. Henry VIII on Tour will thus be presenting new stories, posing and answering innovative research questions, and hopefully inspiring greater curiosity about local places and heritage sites. As well as contributing to our understanding of Henry VIII, his wives and court and the relationship with his people in historical terms, the project will be reflecting on what monarchy and visibility means to us in the 21st century.

Check out their upcoming project events HERE.

Guest Bios:
Anthony Musson Project lead / Theme lead: logistics
Historic Royal Palaces

Professor Anthony Musson joined Historic Royal Palaces in 2018 to lead and foster a distinctive vision for the charity’s research into historic palaces, diverse communities, landscapes and collections. He is editor with JPD Cooper of Royal Journeys in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2022).

Kate Giles Theme lead: legacy
University of York

Kate is a building historian and archaeologist with a particular interest in the study of late medieval and early modern communal and public buildings. As Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture, Kate works with national, regional and local organisations to find creative ways of sustaining and sharing their heritage with others.

Kirsty Wright Post-Doctoral Research Assistant
Historic Royal Palaces

My research focuses on early modern architecture, politics and government. I completed my PhD at the University of York on the Exchequer of Receipt in the Palace of Westminster, which explored the relationship between institutional development and the architecture of the palace. 

Toby Ward
Ensemble Pro Victoria

Founded at Cambridge in 2015, EPV is a pioneer in combining high-level performance with the latest research. Under their director Toby Ward, EPV won joint-first prize at the London International Festival of Early Music Young Ensemble Competition (2020).  Their Gramophone award-nominated debut recording, Robert Fayrfax: Music for Tudor Kings and Queens, was released by Delphian in 2021. Their second album, Tudor Music Afterlives (Delphian, 2022) includes new polyphonic reconstructions. 

In this episode we feature a project which aims to collect all known images of queens and royal women, called “Reines en images”. Host Ellie Woodacre interviews the project's creator, Matthieu Mensch, discussing the genesis of the project, plans for future expansion and the relevance to images of royal women today. If you are interested in getting involved with the project, Matthieu would love to hear from you, see his contact details below to get in touch.

Guest information:

• Matthieu's webpage at the University of Strasbourg
• Social Media:
  • Instagram @matthieu.mensch
  • Twitter/X  @MatthieuMensch

Bio: Matthieu Mensch obtained his PhD in History from the University of Strasbourg, under joint supervision with the University Federico II of Naples. He worked on the construction and use of images of the Duchesses of Angoulême and Berry from their lifetime to our contemporary reappropriations. He is currently a research associate at the ARCHE Laboratory in the Faculty of Historical Sciences at the University of Strasbourg. His research focuses on queenship and representations, and his first book on the female entourage of Louis XVIII (Les Femmes de Louis XVIII) will be published in September 2024 with Perrin. He is also preparing a book on Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, to be published by Routledge in its Lives of Royal Women series.

This episode features e-Reginae, an exciting project in the field of queenship studies, based at the University of Lisbon. This roundtable includes three members of the project team: project leader Professor Ana Maria S.A Rodrigues, Inês Olaia and Pedro de Sousa. We'll be discussing the project aims, the inspiration behind e-Reginae and their plans for the future--certainly a project with real potential for fellow researchers in queenship and royal studies!

Find out more about the project on their website and by following them on social media!
The project website: http://ereginae.wordpress.com 

Instagram - @e.reginae 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ereginaeproject 

Twitter/X - @eReginaeProject 

Guest information:

• Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues (MA, Sorbonne Université, 1981; PhD University of Minho, 1992; Habilitation, University of Minho, 2002) is Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon and a researcher at its Centre for History. Her research focuses on Portuguese medieval queenship, from the queens’ estates and revenue to jurisdictional and political powers to religious and artistic patronage. Her most recent publications are “Splendour in life, humility in death: Queen Leonor de Lencastre (1458-1525) and the women around her”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 16-1 (2024); Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy, Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, Manuela Santos Silva and Jonathan Spangler eds. (Routledge, 2020); “The Queen Consort in Castile and Portugal. María de Aragon (b. 1403-d. 1445), Queen of Castile and Leonor de Aragon (b. 1405/1408-d. 1445), Queen of Portugal”, in J. Roe and J. Andrews eds., Representing Women’s Political Identity in the Early Modern Iberian World (Routledge, 2020).
• Inês Olaia is a PhD candidate in Medieval History at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon with a scholarship from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. Her thesis is titled “By the Grace of God Queen of Portugal: queens’ functions and practices in Medieval Portugal”. She holds a MA in Medieval History, with a dissertation on the queens' rule of the towns of Alenquer and Aldeia Galega da Merceana. Her publications include a study of an inquest into Filipa of Coimbra, sister of queen Isabel in 2022, a study on the rule of queens Teresa and Sancha over several towns in Portugal and a work on the itineraries of the queens of Manuel I in 2023. 
• Pedro de Sousa is a 3rd-year student of the History degree at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (FLUL) and the Grant Holder of the eReginae project. His responsibilities consisted of searching and locating the documents issued by the medieval queens of Portugal, as well as their paleographical transcription and uploading to the EGPA (Escritório Galego-Português Antigo) platform.  Pedro is also one of the founders and directors of the History Students Union at FLUL.

In this episode, Susannah Lyon-Whaley is joined by Susan Taylor-Leduc to discuss her latest book and ongoing research on Marie Antoinette and gardens.

Susan's 2022 book on Marie Antoinette - Marie Antoinette's Legacy: The Politics of French Garden Patronage and Picturesque Design, 1775-1867 - is available from Amsterdam University Press here.

More information on Susan and her research is available on her website. 

Susan’s reading recommendations:

●       Griffey, Erin. ‘“The Rose and Lily Queen”: Henrietta Maria’s Fair Face and the Power of Beauty at the Stuart Court.’ Renaissance Studies 35, no. 5 (2021): 811–836.

●       Hyde, Elizabeth. Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

●       Lyon-Whaley, Susannah, ed. Floral Culture and the Tudor and Stuart Courts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.

In this episode, Ellie Woodacre interviews Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on his new book The Cleopatras. The Forgotten Queens of Egypt, published by Wildfire/Basic Books in May 2024. We discuss the need for this book which looks at all seven of the Cleopatras who were dynamic and fascinating co-rulers of Ptolemaic Egypt. We also discuss the particular dynamics of Ptolemaic rulership and the ways in which it brought together elements of Macedonian and Egyptian ideas of rule. In addition, we talk about how these women were 'goddess queens' who were worshipped both in their own time and after their death and how they used this quasi-divine status to enhance their power.

Guest Bio: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff University. His research concentrates, in the main, on the Persian empire, the ancient Near East, and the Hellenistic world. He also works on gender and reception history. Lloyd has published extensively, often with a focus on monarchy and court society. Recent books include King and Court in Ancient Persia (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), The Hellenistic Court (Classical Press of Wales, 2016), Persians: the Age of the Great Kings (Wildfire/Basic Books, 2022), Kleopatra Thea and Kleopatra III. Sister-Queens in the High-Hellenistic Period (Routledge, 2022), and Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther: Achaemenid Court Culture in the Hebrew Bible (I.B. Tauris, 2023). 

In this episode on Egyptian kingship we are speaking to Dr Caleb R. Hamilton (Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Kāi Tahu). Caleb is the Pouārahi, Principal Advisor Environmental Outcomes for Houkura, the Independent Māori Statutory Board. He was previously an Aporei Mātai (Principal Anaylst) at Te Puni Kōkiri and was Pou Matua Taonga Tuku Iho (Principal Advisor, Heritage) at the Department of Conservation.

Caleb currently holds an Research Associate position with Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. He earned his PhD in archaeology and Egyptology from Monash University and his MA, BA Hons and LLB from Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. He has published on the Early Dynastic period, early Egyptian kingship, and the Western Desert and will soon produce new work on mummified human remains in Aotearoa as well as finalising his PhD into a manuscript for publication.

Find out more about Caleb and his research at his academia.edu page.

In this episode, we have a roundtable with the lead editor and three contributors to the new collection, Notions of Privacy at Early Modern European Courts: Reassessing the Public and Private Divide, 1400-1800 (AUP, 2024). We discuss whether the term 'privacy' is problematic in terms of early modern court life and what expectations monarchs themselves might have had of privacy. If you enjoyed this episode, follow the link above--the book is freely available in Open Access thanks to the Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Guest Bios:

Dustin M. Neighbors is the project coordinator and a postdoctoral researcher for the EU-Horizon project, Colour4CRAFTS,  at the University of Helsinki. His main areas of research are monarchy and court culture, with an emphasis on the performativity of gender, political and material culture, cultural practices and history (i.e., hunting) within sixteenth- and seventeenth century Northern Europe, and the employment of digital research methods.

Dries Raeymaekers is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). He specializes in the political culture of the early modern period, with particular attention for the history of monarchy, dynastic history, and the history of the court in Western Europe. He has published widely on princely favourites, ladies-in-waiting, and the 'politics of access' at early modern courts, including 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 UP, 2013),  A Constellation of Courts: The Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555-1665 (Leuven UP, 2014) and The Key to Power? The Culture of Access in Princely Courts, 1450-1750 (Brill, 2016).

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger is Professor Emerita of Early Modern History at the University of Muenster. Since 2018, she has been Rector of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. Her main areas of research include: the political culture of the Holy Roman Empire; social and political symbols, metaphors, rituals, and procedures of the early modern period; and the history of ideas.

Oskar J. Rojewski is an assistant professor at the University of Silesia and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Privacy Studies of the University of Copenhagen and the University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. He studies fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flemish art and European court rituals, particularly the status of artists, their migration, networks, and relationships with sovereigns.

This episode features a new book series 'Monarchy, History and Culture' at AUP. The series seeks to publish studies on monarchy, both individual and comparative, from the ancient world to the French Revolution. In this episode, we interview two of the series editors to discuss what kind of work they are hoping to feature and tips for authors who would like to publish their work in the new series.

Guest Bios:

Erika Gaffney is an acquisitions editor for the AUP. She is also the Founder of the Art Herstory project, to recover the lives and works of historic women artists. Follow Erika on Twitter,  Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky and/or Academia.edu.

Aidan Norrie is Lecturer in History and Literature and the Programme Leader of the BA (Hons) English and History Studies degree at the University Campus North Lincolnshire. They are the Managing Editor of The London Journal, the author of Elizabeth I and the Old Testament: Biblical Analogies and Providential Rule (2023), and the co-editor of the English Consorts collection (2022) and Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe (2019).

Today’s episode celebrates the publication of Floral Culture and the Tudor and Stuart Courts, ed. Susannah Lyon-Whaley (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).

These interdisciplinary essays engage with flowers as real, artificial, and represented objects across the Tudor and Stuart courts in gardens, literature, painting, interior furnishing, garments, and as jewels, medicine, and food. If the rose operated as a particularly English lingua franca of royal power across two dynasties, this volume sheds light on an array of wild and garden flowers to offer an immersive picture of how the Tudor and Stuart courts lived and functioned, styled and displayed themselves through flowers. 

Speaker Biographies:

Eleri Lynn is a fashion and textiles historian and curator. She is the author of several monographs including Tudor Fashion (Yale University Press, 2017, winner of the Historians of British Art Prize), and Tudor Textiles (Yale University Press, 2020). Eleri is the curator of several major exhibitions including The Lost Dress of Elizabeth I (Hampton Court Palace, 2019).

Maria Hayward is professor of early modern history at the University of Southampton. She works on material culture at the Tudor and Stuart courts. Her books include Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (2009), and Stuart Style: Monarchy, Dress and the Scottish Male Elite (2021). 

Beverly Lemire is Professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair, University of Alberta, Canada and a Member of the Order of Canada. She publishes widely on the gendered and racialised history of fashion, global trade, and material culture (c. 1600–1840) from British, European, colonial, and comparative perspectives. She is co-editor with Christopher Breward and Giorgio Riello of the two-volume Cambridge Global History of Fashion (2023):

Susan M. Cogan is an Associate Professor of History at Utah State University. Her research focuses on social, religious, and environmental history of late-medieval and early modern England. Her publications include Catholic Social Networks in Early Modern England: Kinship, Gender, and Coexistence (Amsterdam, 2021) and articles on gardens, architecture, antiquarianism, and gender.

A Floral Recipe to Try at Home:

 ‘A Second Course Dish in the Beginning of the Spring’ aka a floral recipe for ‘dough balls’ or ‘doughnuts’ from William Rabisha, The Whole Body of Cookery (London: 1661), 205.

Take of Primrose-leaves two handfuls, and boyl them, and scruise the water from them, and mince them small, three Pippins, season it with Cinamon, put to it half a handful of dry floure, and the yolks of eight eggs, only two whites of the same, mingle this together, adding a little Sugar, Cream, and Rose-water, your stuff must be thick that it run not abroad, your pan being hot with clarified Butter, drop them in by less then spoonfuls, and fry them on both sides as crisp as you can, dish them, and scrape on Sugar.