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Magna Carta and the People
The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta has brought with it a lot of rather self-congratulatory and not always entirely relevant musings on the triumph of the Westminster system of government and the...
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Stock on Dissident Identity Formation
Having come direct from reading the Guardian’s reports on Tunisia over breakfast, I am now re-reading Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, in preparation for my paper at Leeds in a week or so’s...
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What’s in a Name?
The rose may smell as sweet regardless, but names still matter. Image from wikimedia commons. Some weeks ago, not for the first time, I received a compliment from a student that both gave me a little...
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Conference Report “Beyond Exceptionalism”
Kathleen Neal:I’m so excited by the historiographical developments that underpin this recent US conference (report by Lois Huneycutt, rebloged below). It’s been my conviction for some time that we need...
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The Beauty of Whiteboards
This is one reason why I love my office. There are many wonderful things about having an academic office, but the thing that I love the most about my digs is the enormous double whiteboard along one...
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A Life in Language
Umberto Eco has passed away, and with him we’ve lost one of our great thinkers about the meaning and implications of language. Like many people, I first encountered Eco as a fiction author. I remember...
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Building a post-doc network
Lately I’ve been reflecting on how hard it is for those floating in a post-doctoral limbo land to connect with academic networks and stay ‘in the game’. I was undeniably one of the lucky ones in this...
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Revisiting Medieval Women’s Letters
A long time ago, I began a project on women’s letters in the collection formerly known as Ancient Correspondence (Kew, The National Archives, SC 1). In the course of events, this project took a number...
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‘Science’ existed in the Middle Ages
Dear students, in fact, dear everyone, Science existed in the middle ages. Even though possibly well-meaning but definitely misguided early modern (and modern) scholars (and particularly wikipedia et...
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New Book Out
I rarely get a chance to update the blog these days, with one thing and another. But I do have some exciting news: my book, The Letters of Edward I: Political Communication in the Thirteenth Century...
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