The End of Times

Ah, academic summer. Leeds IMC next week, then Thirteenth Century (England?) in Cambridge. Then months of summerness. And then the beginning of term again. Come end of September, I'll be entering the dreaded? coveted? scary? necessary? FOURTH YEAR of my PhD. Of course, to some, especially outside the UK, it's ridiculous to even think that …

Time to Think

So my grand goals of resuscitating this blog still remain goals...! But in terms of research and writing and general progress, things have been busy. With all the possible caveats associated with this, I can say that I think I'm done with the bulk of my research - I have substantial drafts of my chapters. …

Paris!

I'm about halfway through my three-month 'exchange' in Paris, at the École nationale des chartes. Time flies (but is also slower than in London? more on that below)! I'm glad that it was possible for me to come here. My supervisor and others encouraged me to do this, a grant from LAHP made it more …

Cistercians, Dominicans, Franciscans

So all medievalists have to deal with monks or friars at one point or another. Although I'd briefly studied the mendicants back during my BA, switching gears from the secular to the regular clergy is surprisingly difficult. The episcopate's fight for libertas ecclesiae rubbed off on me and so it is quite a shock to the system …

Teaching the Middle Ages

So, this past year I had the opportunity to teach on various courses in the UCL History Department. I started off by teaching on a course called 'Writing History,' which is designed to teach first-year undergraduates how to write university-level essays. The positive side of this course was that it forced me to reflect on …

Long time no see

Again, I've been really bad at updating this blog. But that's not to say that I haven't been busy researching and writing for my PhD! Since I do want this blog to incorporate vignettes from my research, as well as my time working on my thesis, I will reflect back on the months that I'd …

Write, write, write

It's been a while. A lot has happened. I've been working on a chapter about Polish archbishops and bishops in the two centuries my thesis hopes to cover. As you can probably imagine, that involves a lot more STUFF I have to deal with than in the case of legates and nuncios. I've probably written …

Reflections on the International Medieval Congress in Leeds

So, it is done. I attended my first big history conference, and managed to give a paper! My main aim for the conference was to meet and chat with the various (Polish) medievalists working on Poland, since this was such a great opportunity for this. And I managed to do so! It was really important …

Academic Summer

'Academics get the summer off.' As if. Even we, the baby PhD students, know this is not true. The first hint of this is the flurry of conference calls for papers that make it into your inbox around Springtime. Then, come Summer Term, everyone's talking about 'Conference Season.' My fellow UCL History PhD students and …

Archbishops, Bishops, and Prelates

Moving away from writing about legates and nuncios, I've now switched to looking at the local clerical elites. This is proving interesting, if just in terms of how to engage with the material. There is definitely a lot more scholarship that exists - both on the clergy as a group as well on individuals and …