Staff profile

My research looks at gendered affective experiences of love and lovesickness in medieval French and English chivalric romance in light of Wace's claim that “pure amistié e pur amies / Funt chevaliers chevaleries” (‘it is for love and their beloved that knights do knightly deeds). I am keen to trace the transmission of medical scholarship from the east to the west to explore how philosophy and science impacted the way in which medieval thinkers viewed sickness in the mind and body, and how romance writers contributed to a so-called 12th century Renaissance with regards to their interest in humanism.

I am particularly interested in the songs of the troubadours, the works of Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer, and Christine de Pisan, as well as their classical influences. Key critical texts in my thesis include those that attempt to define love, ranging from the dialogues of Plato, the writings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, to modern psychological studies on how attraction between members of the opposite sex works.

I am further intrigued by how presentations of love differ across cultures, with a portion of my work involving a comparative study of Welsh and Old Norse translations of French romances.

I work in the department as a Teaching Assistant on the 'Epic and the Literature of Legend' module and as a Social Media Intern. I am a Postgraduate Fellow in the Institute for Medical Humanities and an active member of the Medieval and Early Modern Students Association, having organised the 18th annual MEMSA Conference of July 2024 on the theme of 'Fear and Loathing in the Medieval and Early Modern World.' Other extracurriculars include serving as Secretary, Academic Officer, and now Vice President for my Middle Common Room and working at Durham Cathedral as a welcome desk clerk, shop assistant, and tour guide.

• mental health in literature
• history of ideas
• literary masculinities
• manuscript studies
• Latin poetry
• Welsh literature
• Old Norse
• Old French