Dr Catherine Rider

Catherine Rider is a specialist on the religious and cultural history of Europe in the central and late Middle Ages, working on the history of magic, medicine, fertility and reproduction. She also works collaboratively on magic in the records of the Roman Inquisition in early modern Malta. She is currently writing a book on medieval views of infertility, funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship for 2024-5. 

Much of her research to date focuses on the history of magic and the church's attitude to magic. This includes two books, Magic and Religion in Medieval England (2012) and Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (2006). She has also co-edited, with Sophie Page, a major reference work, The Routledge History of Medieval Magic (2019).  More recently she has been involved in a series of collaborative projects with Prof. Dionisius A. Agius (Exeter) on magic in Malta, leading to a co-edited book (with Alexander Mallett and Dionisius Agius), Magic in Malta: Sellem bin al-Sheikh Mansur and the Roman Inquisition, 1605 (2022). She has also published several articles and book chapters on the history of infertility in the Middle Ages. 

Prof. Rider has also performed several leadership and administrative roles in her department over the last 10 years. 

She also supervises research students and is happy to hear from prospective PhD students who want to work on magic, medicine or popular religion in the Middle Ages.