Current officers of the centre

Director: Professor Catherine Léglu (Department of Modern Languages and European Studies)

Assistant Director for Teaching and Learning: Dr Anne Mathers-Lawrence (Department of Historical Studies) 

Research Interests of the GCMS Staff

Grenville Astill - BA, PhD (Birmingham), FSA. Professor of Archaeology. British Academy Research Readership 1990-92. Recipient of two national awards for his archaeological fieldwork. Publications and research centre on urban and rural settlement, the medieval economy, technology and monastic archaeology. Co-editor and major contributor to The Countryside of Medieval England (1988) and Medieval Farming and Technology. The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe (1997). Long-term research programmes include excavations and fieldwork on the precinct and estates of Bordesley Abbey, a medieval Cistercian monastery in Worcestershire: A Medieval Industrial Complex and its Landscape: the Metalworking, Watermills and Workshops of Bordesley Abbey was published in 1993 and followed by a series of further publications. He co-directed a multidisciplinary landscape survey in Eastern Brittany, now published as The East Brittany Survey: Fieldwork and Data (1994) and The Breton Landscape (1997).

Adrian Bell BA (Hull), MA (Reading), PhD (Reading). Professor in the History of Finance at the ICMA Centre, University of Reading, Henley Business School, and Head of Pre-Experience postgraduate programmes. He has just completed a major ESRC-funded project with Chris Brooks on the early and innovative use of credit finance by a succession of English medieval monarchs, 2007-10,  https://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/medievalcredit. See the jointly-authored book with Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh, The English Wool Market, c.1230-1327 (Cambridge University Press). His monograph, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century (Boydell and Brewer, 2004) builds on his work on the Hundred Years War, as does his AHRC-funded project on 'The Soldier in Medieval England' (award shared with Professor Anne Curry at the University of Southampton), see http://www.medievalsoldier.org/

Ken Dark -BA (York), PhD (Cantab), FSA, FRHistS. Lecturer in Economics, associate lecturer in History and Director of the Research Centre for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. Dr Dark holds honorary professorships at several European and North American universities. Chair of the Late Antiquity Research Group. Archaeologist and historian specializing in the first millennium AD in Europe and the Mediterranean. He has published very widely on this and related fields and has directed archaeological excavations and surveys both in Britain and the Middle East, most recently as co-director of the Istanbul Rescue Archaeology Project 1998-2004, the Hagia Sophia Project 2004-11, and the Nazareth Archaeological Project 2004-11. His current research include Britain in late Antiquity, early Christianity, landscape archaeology, Roman and Byzantine urbanism, the collapse of states and empires, the relevance of archaeological and historical evidence to understanding contemporary politics, cultures and economics.

Paul Davies -BA (Reading), MA , PhD (London). Lecturer in History of Art. Secretary of the Centre 1994-97. Author of many articles on Italian Renaissance architecture. Revised L.H. Heydenreich's Architecture in Italy 1400-1500, Yale University Press, 1996. Particular interests include the design of centrally planned churches in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the work of Michele Sanmicheli about whom he published a book in 2004. At present cataloguing the Renaissance architectural drawings in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Co-editor of a series of books for Cambridge University Press entitled 'Architecture in Early Modern Italy'.

Roberta Gilchrist - BA, DPhil (York), FBA, FSA. Professor of Archaeology. Research interests in medieval and social archaeology, with particular focus on gender. Has published widely on the archaeology of religious communities (nunneries, monasteries, hospitals), on medieval and early modern burial, and on the archaeology of medieval and later standing buildings. Author of Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (2012); Requiem: the Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain (2005); Norwich Cathedral: the Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape (2005) and Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (1994). Currently engaged in a major project, funded by the AHRC, on the archaeology of Glastonbury Abbey.

Lindy Grant - MA (St Andrews), MA, PhD (Lond.).Professor of Medieval History and Director of the Centre.Author of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis: Church and State in Early Medieval France (1998), and Architecture and Society in Normandy c1120-c1270 (2005), as well as of a series of articles on aspects of architectural patronage and the impact of ecclesiastical reform on the North French Church in the twelfth century.Currently working on a biography of Blanche of Castile.Research interests range across politics, religion and culture in Capetian France and its neighbours, with particular interest in questions of cultural identity, patronage, and the representation of power and rulership.

Phillipa Hardman - BA (East Anglia), BLitt (Oxon). Director of the Centre 1995-98. Senior Lecturer in English and Centre lecturer in Palaeography. Author of articles on Middle English literature (particularly Chaucer and romances) and manuscript studies. Editor of The Heege MS (2000).Current research interests include late-medieval literary miscellanies. Currently working on an AHRC-funded grant (with Dr Marianne Ailes at the University of Bristol) on 'Charlemagne in England'.

Anne Lawrence - MA (Cantab), MA, PhD (London). Senior Lecturer in History. Centre Director 2006-07. MA director and Centre Director for Teaching and Learning. Interested in medieval cultural and intellectual history. Particular expertise and articles focus on aspects of English Romanesque manuscript illumination, book collection and monastic scholarship. Author of articles on the Alfredian manuscript tradition, and the Durham scriptorium, as well as a monograph on Manuscripts in Northumbria in the 11^th and 12^th centuries. Currently researching on 'sublunary bodies', an investigation of astrological/magical texts in early-medieval manuscripts, and completing a book for Yale University Press on the enchanter Merlin.

Catherine Léglu - MA (Cantab), PhD (Cantab). Professor of Medieval Occitan and French Literature. Director of the Centre. Editor of Reading Medieval Studies 2008-10. Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship 2006-07. Author of Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in French, Occitan and Catalan Narratives of the later Middle Ages (Penn State UP, 2010), and of Between Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in Troubadour Lyric, (Oxford, 2000). Co-editor with Marcus Bull of The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the eleventh to thirteenth centuries (Boydell, 2005), and with Stephen J. Milner The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Middle Ages (Palgrave, 2008). Also the editor of a little-known wartime play by Simone de Beauvoir set in the medieval period, Les Bouches Inutiles (Duckworth, 2001). Has published widely on troubadour poetry, especially on satire and invective, and on various aspects of didactic and narrative literature in French, Occitan, Catalan and hybrid vernaculars that were developed purely for literary texts, such as Franco-Italian and Catalan-Occitan. Currently completing a sourcebook (with Rebecca Rist, and Claire Taylor, University of Nottingham) on heresy, inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade (Pearson group). Also working on a Leverhulme Trust-funded project, 'Histories and Genealogies: British Library ms. Egerton 1500' (2010-13), the edition of an Occitan translation of An illustrated universal history by the Franciscan friar, diplomat and bishop of Pozzuoli, Paolino da Venezia (d.1344).

Françoise Le Saux - Licence ès Lettres (Lausanne), MA (Wales), Dr ès Lettres (Lausanne). Formerly of Lausanne (CH), Geneva (CH) and Freiburg-im-Breisgau (D). Professor of Medieval French. Director of the Centre, 2001-4. Editor of Reading Medieval Studies 1997-2008. President of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society. Research interests focus on translation and cultural adaptation in the Middle Ages, with special emphasis on French, English and Celtic literatures. Publications include The Companion to Wace (Boydell, 2005), Layamon's Brut: The Poem and its Sources (1989), Amys and Amylion (1993) and a number of articles on a wide range of subjects. Editor of Myth and its Legacy in European Literature (1996), and with Peter Noble, Phillipa Hardman and Neil Thomas, The Growth of the Tristan and Iseut Legend in Wales, England, France and Germany (2003).

Elizabeth Matthew - BA, PhD (Durham).Honorary Research Fellow and Sessional Lecturer in History. President of the Reading branch of the Historical Association 2000-05.Research interests centre on government, politics, magnates, gentry and prelates in late-medieval England and Ireland.Co-editor (with Anne Curry) of Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages (2000) and contributor to The Oxford Companion to Irish History (1998; 2002) and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).She is currently working on a book for Cambridge University Press on The Lancastrian Lordship of Ireland.

Paola Nasti - Senior Lecturer in Italian. Her interests comprise Dante, Biblical exegesis, mysticism, medieval critical writing and theory, and Italian Cinema. She has published on Dante and the medieval biblical traditions. At present, she is working on a monograph on the presence of Solomonic poetry and traditions in Dante's oeuvre.

Aleks Pluskowski - BA, PhD (Cantab), lecturer in archaeology. Author of Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Boydell, 2006). His interests include exploring ecological diversity across medieval Europe, focussed on zooarchaeology and the inter-disciplinary perspectives of human-animal relations. He is also currently involved in the international research project 'The Ecology of Crusading: the environmental impact of conquest and colonisation in the medieval Baltic, and the environmental impact of Venetian colonisation in the medieval Mediterranean.

Rebecca Rist - BA (Oxon), MPhil, PhD (Cantab). Lecturer in History and editor of Reading Medieval Studies. Author of The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198-1245 (Continuum, 2009), and of articles on popes, crusading, heretics and Jews. Currently working on a sourcebook about medieval heresy and the Albigensian Crusade (for Pearson group), and on a monograph on the papacy and the Jews in Central Middle Ages.

Gabor Thomas - PhD (London). Lecturer in Archaeology. His long standing area of research concerns the cultural significance of Late Anglo-Saxon and Viking age ornamental metalwork, on which he has published widely. His fieldwork develops new approaches to the investigation of early rural settlement in southern England, with a view to exploring the theme of village and manorial origins. His excavations at Bishopstone, East Sussex, will be published later this year as a Council for British Archaeology Research Report.

Margaret Yates - BA (Reading), DPhil (Oxon). Senior Lecturer in Medieval History. Research, teaching and publications consciously cross the historical divide between the medieval and early modern periods and focus on changes in society and the economy. Publications include Town and countryside in western Berkshire, c.1327-c.1600. Social and economic change (2007). The interdisciplinary nature of her research is illustrated in the recently completed KTP with the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, Chicester.

Research Interests of Fellows and Associate Members of the GCMS

Jeremy Ashbee - English Heritage. Expert on medieval castles, especially those of Wales.

Malcolm Barber - BA, PhD (Nottingham), FRHistS.Professor Emeritus of History. Director of the Centre, 1986-89. Author of The Trial of the Templars (1978), The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320 (1992), The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (1994), Crusaders and Heretics, 12^th to 14^th Centuries (1995), The Cathars (1^st edn 2000), and, with Keith Bate, The Templars (2002), and many articles on the Templars, the Cathars, popular crusading movements, the lepers in medieval society, western attitudes to Latin Greece, and the reign of Philip the Fair.Edited an annotated translation of Ambroise's History of the Holy War, with Marianne Ailes. Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 1997-98; Senior Fellow of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, 1998-99; Visiting Professor at the University of East Carolina, 1999-2000.

David Farmer - BLitt (Oxon), FRHistS, FSA. Until retirement Reader in History at Reading. Author of The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, and co-editor of the Life of St Hugh of Lincoln. Author of many articles on hagiography and Benedictine monasticism.

Michael Holford - Expert in medieval economic history.

Edward Impey - English Heritage. Expert on the Tower of London and many other aspects of medieval British architecture.

Brian Kemp -BA, PhD (Reading), FSA, FRHistS. Professor Emeritus of Medieval History. Author of English Church Monuments (1980), editor of Reading Abbey Cartularies, 2 vols (1986-7), editor of English Episcopal Acta, Salisbury, 1078-1228, 2 vols (1999-2000), editor of Twelfth-Century English Archidiaconal Acta (2001), and author of articles on the church in medieval England, monasteries, miracles and the royal exchequer. He is currently working on a third volume of Salisbury Episcopal acta, 1228-1297. Vice-President of the Church Monuments Society; Council member of both the Canterbury and York Society and the Pipe Roll Society.

Gill Knight - BA (Oxon), MA, PhD (Reading). Lecturer in Department of Classics until her retirement in 2010, now Research Fellow in Classics. Has published on the letters of Peter the Venerable, including The Correspondence between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux (2002).

Joanna Laynesmith - MA (York), DPhil (York). Author of 'The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445-1503' (Oxford UP, 2004); currently working on medieval queenship, fifteenth-century politics, and the issue of royal adultery in Britain, 500-1500.

Rosa María Medina Granda - University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. Visiting research fellow 2011-12. Expert in medieval and modern Romance linguistics, especially Occitan and minority languages of Spain.

Peter Noble -MA (Cantab), PhD (London). Emeritus Professor of French Studies. Director of the Centre 1983-86 and 2004-5. Author of Love and Marriage in Chrétien de Troyes (1982), Béroul and the Folie Tristan de Berne (1982), Le Voyage d'Oultremer de Nompar, Seigneur de Caumont(1975) and numerous articles on the French romances, chansons de geste, and medieval chronicles. Also, with Françoise Le Saux, Phillipa Hardman and Neil Thomas, The Growth of the Tristan and Iseut Legend in Wales, England, France and Germany (2003).

Warwick Rodwell - MA, DPhil, D.Lit (Oxon), D.Lit (Lond), DLC, FSA, FRHistS, FSAScot. Visiting Professor in Archaeology. Distinguished ecclesiastical archaeologist, awarded the Frend Medal by the Society of Antiquaries in 1988. Consultant Archaeologist to Westminster Abbey and the Cathedrals of Bristol and Wells. Author of the The Archaeology of the English Church (1^st edn 1981), and still the standard work on the subject, together with major studies of Wells Cathedral, Dorchester Abbey and St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber.

Neil Thomas - formerly Reader in medieval German literature at the University of Durham.