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Emily A. Winkler

Historian, Writer, Educator

Lecturer in Medieval History, St Edmund Hall & Hertford College

Faculty of History, University of Oxford

Brief Bio

I am a cultural historian of high medieval Europe, c. 900–c. 1300. My research interests range widely across the high medieval past, including historical writing, emotion, history of ideas, emotion and health, society, political thought, and material culture. I enjoy teaching writing to history students, collaborating with history teachers on creating new resources for history, and working with history writers of all ages on steering the craft of prose.

Bio

I am Lecturer in Medieval History at Hertford College and St Edmund Hall, and Associate Member of the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. I am the Acquisitions Editor in History at Medieval Institute Publications (University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo / De Gruyter, Berlin). I serve as Vice President for Europe of the Haskins Society.

I recently completed a research fellowship as Principal Investigator of an Arts and Humanities Research Council project, entitled ‘The Search for Parity: Rulers, Relationships and the Remote Past, c. 1100–1300’ (2019–2022). With my Co-Investigator Dr Nia Wyn Jones (Bangor University) I am completing work on our co-authored book, Historical Thinking in the Middle Ages: Wales, England, and the Roman Past.

Previously, I held an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Mainz in Germany (2017–2019) and the John Cowdrey Junior Research Fellowship in History at St Edmund Hall, Oxford (2015–2018). Research Interests I work on historical writing and the literary, political, and intellectual culture of the high Middle Ages, with interests in the British Isles, the Anglo-Norman world, and the North Sea zone. I also study the social and material culture of the Norman Mediterranean world, especially Sicily and southern Italy. In my research, I apply cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches to the past for a better understanding of medieval people and ideas. Several core questions are at the heart of my work. How did medieval writers think about the past? How do art, architecture, and archaeological remains tell stories about the thoughts and values of the people who created and interacted with them? How can medieval narratives tell us about diplomacy and conquest, both in practice and in perception? How can phenomenology—the study and philosophy of lived experience—and recent research on emotions in history help us to retrieve medieval ideas about human thought and feeling?

About Me

I play piano in the rhythm section of the Green Templeton College (GTC) Big Band. I am a volunteer Scout Leader for the 10th Oxford Scouts (a co-ed troop of boys and girls aged 10–14) in Marston. I enjoy writing, short- and long-distance hiking, and kayaking the many waterways of Oxford.

Education

  • DPhil, History, University of Oxford (2013)
  • MSt, Medieval Studies, University of Oxford (2009)
  • AB, History, Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Classical Languages & Literatures (Latin), Dartmouth College, USA (2008)