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From knights in shining armor to kings and queens in their castles, the world of medieval politics readily grabs the imagination—but what lay beneath the surface? Things could be a real mess! Students interested in researching any aspect of how power or violence played out in the societies of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages, and how we should interpret them now, are welcome to write their thesis with me. In my own work I focus on lordship in France during the Hundred Years’ War (c. 1337–1453), especially how both women and men gained, shared, and understood their authority. Your own thesis might engage with one of many questions, such as:
- Queens and queenship—how did women wield power within medieval monarchies
- Chivalric chronicles—how did medieval history-writers portray aristocratic violence in different ways?
- Christine de Pizan—how did Europe’s first professional female author view the hierarchies of her society?
- Gender and warfare—what roles did men and women play in the conflicts of their period?
- ‘Feudal’ relationships and the rise of states—how did medieval power structures evolve and what is the best way to understand them
- Modern interpretations of medieval politics—how well do our games, shows, or movies portray these societies?
- Good lords, bad lords—how functional was lordship, or was it just a system of exploitation?
Depending on language skills, there are rich primary sources available for close study, as well as lively historical debates on these topics and more. I am happy to help students develop their own line of inquiry within any of these areas or more broadly within the scope of European history from c. 1100–1500.