MEMSA Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast

Georgina Watson is a second-year PhD candidate at Manchester University's History Department. Her thesis, 'War, Wealth, and God's Will: The Order of St Stephen between Crusade and Commerce in the late sixteenth century' examines the disconnections of early modern Mediterranean trade, crusade and religious interactions between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Ottoman Empire. She has specific interests in the role of Christianity within commercial trading, the construction of European noble family's identities within literary texts and portraiture and the varied usage of private military orders to shape Muslim/Christian diplomacy throughout the early modern Mediterranean.

Georgina's paper for the MEMSA Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast is entitled 'The Perspective of Fakhr ad-Din al-Ma'n II'.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Katharina Strika is a third-year PhD student at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, focusing on journeys to the underworld in Renaissance texts. She is particularly interested in the coexistence of Christian and ancient mythological imaginations of the afterlife in texts of the 15th and 16th centuries. 

Katharina's paper for the MEMSA Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast explores these themes in Ulrich von Hutten's Phalarismus.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Dr Valeria Viola is a mother of two wonderful daughters and an Art teacher with experience in both architectural practice and research. She worked as an architect with a specialization in restoration (1997-2015), taught Art-related subjects at different grades of education (2005-2016) and published nine essays on baroque architecture (1999-2015). In 2020 Viola completed her PhD programme in History of Art and Architecture at the University of York (UK), with a thesis on the interconnections between architecture, devotion, and family life in Baroque Palermo. The results of her research were shared through seven essays, nine conferences and three seminars (2018-2021). She is currently engaged in integrating gender and postcolonial perspectives into school teaching, while working on a book tentatively titled "Neighbourly Relationships in Eighteenth-century Palermo". 

Dr Viola's paper for the MEMSA Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast explores masters' and servants' spaces in eighteenth-century Palermo.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

In the sixteenth century, King Henry VIII made the extraordinary decision to break away from the Catholic Church in Rome. This decision set in motion a wave of transformative changes that impacted every level of English society. In this episode, Samuel Pearson explores a fascinating manuscript collection that offers a window into how the Reformation was received by the laity in Kent, whilst offering important insights into popular politics in early modern England more generally.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Dr Euan Roger is a principal records specialist in the medieval team at The National Archives, specialising in the records of late medieval and Tudor English government, the central law courts, and the secular clergy, with a particular interest in aspects of social, medical, political and material history. His paper for the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast uncovers new evidence for the development of quarantine measures in early modern England.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Connor is a PhD student at the University of Bristol where his research interests lie in the political, social and cultural history of early modern England. His paper for the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast explores how modern social networking analysis can reshape our understanding of Tudor court politics.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Adam is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Hull working on identity and hybridity in the medieval north of England. His PhD research focuses on Yorkshire and Northumberland between 1066 and 1216, using baronial families as a lens through which to examine the distinct political, social, cultural and religious characteristics of these regions. His paper for the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries Podcast explores northern identity in the age of the Norman conquest.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

In this penultimate episode of the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries series, Fergal Leonard of Durham University discusses the career of Henry Leigh, a minor border officer in the last two decades of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Fergal is a third-year PhD student, and his project explores political culture and political agency in the governance of the Elizabethan West March, c. 1569 - 1603.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Giulia Calabrò is a PhD student in medieval history at the University of Trieste. Her project looks at the presence of Genoese merchants in England between 1458 and 1466, a period in which they were subject to fines and expropriations by Henry VI after a pirate tied to the city had sunk English ships in the Mediterranean. Her paper for the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries podcast explores news networks in late medieval Europe by examining how news of the Battle of Towton spread to the court of the Francesco I, Duke of Milan.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Dr Anastasija Ropa is lecturer at the Latvian Academy of Sport Education, Department of Management and Communication Science. She has presented at international conferences and published articles on medieval and modern Arthurian literature, aspects of the history of medieval Livonia, on medieval animal studies, and on equestrian history. In her Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries episode she examines the representations of the borders of Livonia in early modern chronicles and maps. 

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė is a third-year PhD student in Italian at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Her thesis focuses on Dante’s unorthodox understanding of the senses in visionary and dream experience, contextualising Dante’s dream writing in relation to theologically inflected late medieval vision genre more generally. In her talk for the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries podcast series she explores the depiction of dreaming in Dante’s Purgatorio 9 as an experience that enables the crossing of physical and conceptual boundaries.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

In this double episode, Aisha Hussain and Sam Brown share their research on early modern Englishmen and their perspective on the Ottoman 'other'.

Aisha Hussain is a PhD candidate at the University of Salford whose research interests include of Turkish Otherness, fictional terror, Anglo-Ottoman commerce, gender studies, Orientalism, and, in particular, crusading and anti-crusading discourses in early modern English drama. Her current research investigates how the emergence of a more positive theatrical Turkish type in the works of Fulke Greville, Thomas Goffe and Roger Boyle reflects, in a shift from their contemporaries, what can be considered an anti-crusading discourse. Her paper is entitled, 'Reframing the Crusading Discourse: representations of Roxolana in Fulke Greville’s Mustapha (1609) and Roger Boyle’s Mustapha (1665)'. She can be emailed at A.Hussain34@edu.salford.ac.uk or followed on Twitter at @AishaHussain96.

Sam Brown is in the first year of her PhD studies at UCL’s Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. Building on her MA dissertation on the same subject, her project explores the materiality and afterlives of the manuscripts of William Bedwell (1563 - 1632), the first Englishman since the Crusades to dedicate his life to the study of Arabic. Her paper for the MEMSA Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries podcast is entitled 'Fear and Loathing in Constantinople: fact versus fiction in the Turkish captivity of Sir Thomas Sherley the Younger'. She can be emailed at samantha.brown.18@ucl.ac.uk or followed on Twitter at @samuscript. 

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Dr Katarzyna Burzyńska holds a PhD in English literature and is currently an assistant professor at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She teaches translation, culture studies and English early modern drama. Her research interests include feminist and queer studies with a focus on history of embodiment as well as philosophical analysis of literature. In 2016 she published her doctoral dissertation entitled The early modern (re)discovery of ‘overhuman’ potential: Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s over-reachers in the light of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

This paper is part of a bigger project entitled “Sir, she came in great with child, and longing”: phenomenology of pregnancy in English early modern drama (Measure for Measure 2.1.96)” financed by The National Science Centre, Poland within the scheme OPUS (Contract no. UMO-2017/27/B/HS2/00089, Project no. 2017/27/B/HS2/00089).

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Dr Maria Volkonskaya is an associate professor in the school of foreign languages at National Research University Higher School of Economics. Her research interests lie in the field of the history of English language and literature, recently focusing on the language of medieval religious treatises and homilies. Her paper for the CBCB podcast is part of a larger research collaboration on the virtues of the Mass as represented in the British Isles (in Latin, Middle English, Irish, and Welsh texts) carried out together with Dr. Elena Parina (Philipps-Universität Marburg/Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow).

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

In this double episode, Samantha Hunter and Kirsty Haslam discuss burgh governance and the politics, society, and culture of urban centres in early modern Scotland.

Samantha Hunter is in the first year of her PhD at the University of Dundee. Her research primarily focusses on the relationships between ecclesiastical and secular authorities and the boundaries of their jurisdictions within localities. Her paper for the Crossing Borders, Contesting Boundaries podcast uses the burghs of 17th-century Fife to explore concepts of state building and models of governance.

Kirsty Haslam is in the second year of her PhD at the University of Aberdeen, where her work examines the social and cultural impact of conflict in medieval and early modern Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. Her research draws both on documentary sources and the material culture and architecture of the region to examine the relationship between urban and rural communities and investigate the possibility of a regional martial culture.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Asseline Sel, Aspirante F.R.S-FNRS, is a PhD student in the department of Germanic languages and literature at Université de Namur in Belgium. Her PhD thesis focuses on the use of the French language and the representation of French culture in Shakespeare’s Henriad, critical editions, translations, and performances over time. In this CBCB podcast, she addresses French scenes and French language spoken by English characters in Jacobean city comedies, the perception of French people in early modern London, and how this perception played into the negotiation of the boundaries of English identity. She can be contacted at asseline.sel@unamur.be.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

Hannah Weaver is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh where her research focuses on space, gender, and illicit behaviour in late eighteenth-century Edinburgh. In this episode, she presents a paper on what Ranger's Impartial List can tell us about urban boundaries and illicit space in early modern Edinburgh and discusses her research with James Taffe, MEMSA's chair.

Music: Aitua, 'Blind Fire', from the album Elements. Used with the kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.