As a doctoral candidate in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, with a secondary field in Medieval Studies, I have gained advanced training in medieval Latin, paleography, medieval history, and the medieval languages and literatures of Britain and Ireland. My doctoral research has been the first major effort at locating, transcribing, translating, and analyzing a vast corpus of healing charms in premodern Welsh manuscripts. These texts are most often in Welsh, although many are in Latin, and I have found a handful in English and French as well. I am fascinated by the ways in which the texts operate at the nexus of science, magic, and religion.
In my research I pose three major questions: 1) How did Welsh charm users adapt and innovate healing texts that were common throughout Europe? 2) What networks of knowledge exchange existed that allowed for such a rich transmission of texts between Wales, England, and Europe? 3) How does the more general socio-historical and cultural environment in premodern Wales shape the ways in which healing texts are accessed?
My project comes at a time of renewed interest in historical methods of healing in general. Scholars have realized the rich potential of historic healing texts to shed light on several aspects of a Britain that is increasingly realized to have been more multilingual and multicultural than often credited. Welsh healing charms form an important contribution to this notion of Britain as a multilingual nation well connected to European intellectual life.
I completed my MA in Medieval Welsh Literature at Aberystwyth University, and before that I completed a BA in Classics at Hunter College, City University of New York. I grew up in the small, friendly town of Wathena, Kansas.
My research interests include Medieval Welsh and Irish literature and social history; paleography; healing in medieval and early modern Britain; premodern knowledge production and transmission between Britain and Europe; medieval, multilingual Britain; the interplay between science, religion, and popular practice in medieval and early modern healing; and oral traditions (premodern and modern) in Britain.