Ceræ Committee

Matthew is an Associate Lecturer at Flinders University, Adelaide, and a Research Associate at University of Adelaide and Australian Catholic University. His research interests focus on medieval history writing and depictions of the English past in later medieval texts. He is also assistant editor for the Brepols series East Central Europe, 476–1795, is the review editor for the Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, and is presently working on his first monograph, a biographical study of English queens-consort in the years 850-1000, scheduled for publication in the Routledge Lives of Royal Women series.

Ashley Castelino is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford, working on supernatural dogs in Old Norse literature. His interests span the wider medieval and medievalist worlds, from Middle English lions to Viking images in modern India, with a special focus on human-animal studies. Ashley holds a BA in English Literature and History from Durham University and an MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from Cambridge University.

Malek J. Zuraikat is an associate professor of Medieval English literature in the English Department of Yarmouk University. He teaches several courses of English literature and criticism and supervises some master theses in literature. He has several publications in different academic journals, such as JJMLL, IJAES, 3L, Dirasat, Orbis Litterarum, Literature Compass, etc. He is currently working on several research projects associated with Middle English language and literature. 

Amanda Burrows is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Saskatchewan in the English department. Her research focuses on the representation of women and magic in Middle English romances approaching the representation of magic from both a literary and historical perspective.

Maria Gloria’s research focuses on the history and marginalised experiences of the Roma in the early modern period as well as the contemporary implications of present-day minority Italian experiences. She was awarded a Masters degree from the University of Milan (2015) with the thesis, ‘Gypsies in the Duchy of Milan and the Metamorphosis of the Economical Assistance, XV- XVII’, and a PhD from the University of Pavia (2019), with the thesis, ‘Gypsies in the Spanish Empire System, Soldiers, Bandits and Vagabonds between Milan, Naples and Castile, centuries XVI-XVII’. In 2020 she was awarded the Guglielmo Savoldelli scholarship award promoted by Archivio Bergamasco. Maria Gloria also collaborates with several European research groups, such as the Max Weber Programme for Multidisciplinary Research for the Mobilities in Early Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean and the Prague Forum for Romani History.

Michele Seah is a scholar of queens and queenship with broader interests in more general royal studies. Her doctoral research focused on the economic and financial resources of the later fifteenth-century queens consort of England. Examining their scale and extent, her research facilitates greater understanding of how queens consort were provided for and how they used such resources. Her current research projects reflect her interests in other English royals, focusing on diverse persons such as Henry II, a twelfth-century English king, and Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr, the last two queens consort of Henry VIII, king of England in the sixteenth century.

Lindsay Church is a third year PhD candidate at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS), where she is a Special Provost-Alumni Scholar. Her SSHRC-funded research focuses on alterity, grief, and imagined community in medieval and contemporary Arthurian adaptations. While she mainly focuses on medieval literature and pop culture, Lindsay also has an interest in early modern literature, particularly women writers of the period. Her SSHRC-funded MA research focused on this interest, tracing female literary spaces in the translation work of the Scottish writer/translator Anna Hume.

Erica Steiner is a final-year MPhil candidate at the University of Sydney in the Celtic Studies department, and her thesis explores the history and historiography of Insular tattooing from antiquity to the early medieval period, as well as how this informs the broader study of ethnicity and identity in this period. As well having as a BA (Hons) in Medieval Studies, with a thesis entitled ‘The Dating and Datability of Beowulf in an Historical and Eschatological Context’, Erica also holds a BSc in Marine Geophysics. Her other research projects include studies in landscape archaeology and geomythology, as well as representations of the past in modern media.

Jenny is currently a postgraduate student in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Her current research in Intellectual and Literary History focuses on the Satanic Witch of the Sabbath in medieval France.

James Cogbill is a DPhil candidate in medieval History at the University of Oxford. His research explores the mutually-inscribing interconnectivity of the premodern ruling family and ‘political culture’ – the framework of structures, practices and expectations within which a polity’s political actors operate – in the Late Byzantine period (c. 1261-1461). He previously completed a BA in Ancient and Medieval History at the University of Birmingham and an MPhil in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at the University of Oxford.

Lorenzo is a PhD student at the ZEGK (Zentrum für Europäische Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften) of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Germany), in cotutelle with Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy). His doctoral research focuses on funerary culture in Rome in the Late Middle Ages. He is also interested in the study of religious practices in the Middle Ages and the history of the papacy. He obtained the title of ‘Specialist in Archaeological Heritage’ with honours at Sapienza University of Rome (2019), with a thesis about Medieval Epigraphy and Antiquities titled: ‘Sepulchres of Prestige in Rome in the Late Middle Ages. The Knight of Santa Prassede’. He obtained his master’s degree with honours in Medieval Archaeology at University of Roma Tre (2016), with a thesis titled: ‘The late medieval necropolis of the vicus ad Carinas‘. From 2013 to 2018 he participated in the excavation and research project at the Templum Pacis and the vicus ad Carinas, in the Imperial Fora in Rome. During winter 2018, he participated in the excavation campaign at the medieval site of Grange Castle in Dublin.

Meredith Cutrer is currently a DPhil candidate in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Her dissertation focuses on exile in early medieval Ireland and Britain. Her other academic interests include Latin translation, late antique Egypt, Early Irish law, historical theology, art history, and Latin and Early Irish literature. Meredith participates regularly in archaeological digs including Tintagel, Vindolanda, Glendalough, Kazakly-yatkan (Uzbekistan), and Cap de Cavalleria (Menorca).

Natalie Hopwood is an independent scholar with a MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Medieval History from the University of St Andrews. Her research is on the study of the thematic and narrative importance of the supernatural in Old Norse poetry and prose, as well as the modern reception of Norse literature in the fantasy genre. She will be starting a PhD in the northern autumn of 2023 to research the connections between dvergar, ormar, and draugar as found in Eddic poetry and fornaldarsögur. Upcoming research projects in 2023 include the reception of shieldmaidens in popular culture and the symbolic power of blood-drinking in Eddic poetry.

Dain Swenson is currently studying a masters in archaeology theory and methods at Lund University, Sweden. He completed a MA in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies at the University of Iceland in 2019, conducting a study on Viking Age diet through isotope analysis for a thesis. Prior to that he received a BA at Arizona State University in Anthropology in 2017. Dain has worked professionally both in Europe and the United States as a field archaeologist and in museums. His research interests include geophysical archaeology and changes in old Nordic religion in the Iron Age.

David is a higher degree research student at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. For his Masters of Research degree, David undertook an examination of the construction and perception of Theoderic the Amal’s rule of Italy in the late fifth and early sixth century. David’s current PhD research focuses on who/what constituted the court of Theoderic and how it influenced the post-Roman administration of Italy and its peripheries. Additional to his studies of Theoderic, David is interested in the continuity, adaption or rejection of classical literature, architecture and ideology in the Early Medieval period.