Dr Sarah Hamilton
Research Interests
Current projects
I am primarily interested in social, religious and ideological issues, in particular in using liturgical material to study otherwise little known areas of medieval life. My research to date has been mainly concerned with using the institution of penance to examine Lotharingian, German and Italian society in the period c. 900 - c. 1100. More recently I have studied other aspects of pastoral care (the subject of my British Academy postdoctoral fellowship), and also Cathar theology. I am currently investigating the history of the practice of excommunication. I am interested not only in institutions and their ideology, in particular monasteries, bishops and kings, but also the impact which religious practice had on 'lay' society in this period: I am writing a book provisionally entitled The Medieval Reformation: The Church and the Laity, 900-1200. Other interests include how sacred space was defined, and also some of the ideas surrounding medieval kingship, and in 2003 I co-organised two conferences on these themes: one on Definitions of Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, and the other on The Limits of Medieval Biography.
I am a member of the British Academy-sponsored international research network on Political Culture in Norman and Angevin England (1066-1272) in Comparative Perspective, organised by Professor Christoph Egger (University of Vienna) and Dr Bjorn Weiler (University of Wales, Aberystwyth). I am also a member of a network of medieval and early modern British scholars working on sacred space: Making the Church Holy (http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/index.php/research/project/making_the_church_holy/), and one of British scholars working on the medieval Church: The Social Church (organised by Drs Ian Forrest (Oriel College, Oxford) and Sethina Watson (University of York).
I am also interested in interdisciplinary collaboration on the study of medieval liturgical rites in their wider context. I organised a workshop on Recovering medieval liturgies: methodologies for the study of liturgical rites, c. 750-1500 of 17 international scholars, held at Rewley House, Oxford on 15th September 2007, which was supported by a British Academy small grant. I am also organising a round table session on the problems and possibilities of studying medieval rites at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July 2008.
Recent seminar and conference papers include:
'Curse or procedure? Excommunication in practice', International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds (11 July 2007)
'Services for the reconciliation of excommunicants", Symposium on The Secular Church in Late Anglo-Saxon England, University of Leeds (29 March 2007)
'Sickly or saintly? Henry II of Germany, 1002-24', Arts and Visual Cultures Subject Centre, University of Manchester (22 January 2007)
'Going beyond the scaffolding of the Church': the local community and the Church 900-1200', History Department seminar, University of Edinburgh (21 February 2006 )
'Liturgy and memory in tenth- and eleventh-century Germany', Interpreting the Past in Medieval Germany conference, University of St Andrews, 19-22 July 2005
'The Anglo-Saxon and 'The Anglo-Saxon and Frankish evidence for rites for the reconciliation of excommunicants', Neue Normen und veränderte Praxis. Kirchliches und weltliches Recht am Ende des 9. und am Beginn des 10. Jahrhunderts, 4-6 April 2005, Historisches Kolleg, Munich
Research Supervision
I am happy to supervise research students interested in investigating most aspects of the religious and social history of early medieval Europe c. 900 – c. 1200. I am particularly interested in using liturgical evidence to study various aspects of religious practice in this period; investigating the evidence for both social and political rituals, and in comparing the evidence from England with that from France and Germany.
Research Students
- Matthew Mesley: Episcopal Vitae in Twelfth-century England (in progress) (AHRC funded; in progress)
- Hilary Millet: Death in Anglo-Norman England (jointly supervised with Oliver Creighton in Archaeology; in progress)
- Tamsin Rowe: Rites of Purification in the English Liturgy, c. 900 - c. 1200 (in progress) (AHRC funded; in progress)
- Christopher Wilson: The Dissemination of Vision Narratives of the Otherworld in Thirteenth-Century England (jointly supervised with Catherine Rider) (in progress)
Completed
- Michael Williams, Medieval Devon Roodscreens (PhD, 2008) (jointly supervised with Nicholas Orme)
- Arnold Shipp: William of Wykeham and the Founding of Winchester College (PhD, 2009) (jointly supervised with Nicholas Orme)
