Dr Helen Birkett

I am a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History with expertise in twelfth-century Britain and Ireland, intellectual and religious culture, medieval monasticism, hagiography, and news. My main research interests concern the construction of texts and narratives in the central Middle Ages, and the ways in which recent information, particularly news, was transmitted and preserved.

I completed my doctorate at the University of York in 2009 and subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh. I joined Exeter's history department in 2011. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and have published a monograph, The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness: Hagiography, Patronage and Ecclesiastical Politics, as well as various articles. I have two medieval projects currently on the go: the first explores the concept of news in the Middle Ages; the second investigates how the communication networks of the Cistercian Order functioned in practice.

I am also co-lead on another, very different, project: Section 28 and its afterlives. This is, primarily, an oral history project and reflects my commitment to promoting social justice and equality.

I welcome enquiries from students and postdocs with research interests in the following areas:

• Religious, intellectual, and cultural history c.1000-1300, particularly in the British Isles
• The interaction of orality and literacy, and the creation of medieval texts
• The historical contextualisation of narrative texts, especially hagiography
• Medieval communication, particularly news

If you would like to work with me, then please send an e-mail outlining your proposed project along with a CV and a sample of your recent work.