I am a specialist in late medieval art and social history in Europe, with a particular interest in the visualiation of sin and morality. My research focuses on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century wall painting and frescoes, with a particular focus on patronage, viewership, and reception. I am interested in how patrons or organisations used images to construct and communicate their own moral identities, while simultaneously shaping how others were expected to think, feel, and behave. More broadly, my work explores how emotions and behaviour were conceptualised, communicated, and moralised, and how images could participate in the formation of both individual and collective ideas of moral conduct, and emotional and behavioural norms.
These themes were explored in my PhD thesis, The thesis looked at iconographic subjects such as the Seven Deadly Sins and the Warning of the Gossipers which focused on defining, categorising, and offering judgement on human behaviour. It offered an expanded understanding of morality wall paintings, incorporating analyses within their specific spatial and social contexts, as images intentionally commissioned and existing within particular communities, and within the broader philosophical, theological, and popular culture of morality in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It sought to shift understanding of these murals away from ideas of church education and towards their more dynamic functions: communicating and reinforcing complex doctrinal, ethical, and psychological understandings of morality, shaping the public perception of their patrons, and encouraging a particularised form of self-reflection. This informs my current research projects, including an article on the early-fourteenth century wall paintings scheme at .
Education
2021-2026: PhD, 91ÖÆƬ³§
2020-2021: MSt Interdisciplinary Historical Research (Medieval Studies), University of Oxford
2017-2020: BA (Hons.) History of Art, 91ÖÆƬ³§
Research Grants, Scholarships, and Awards
2021-2025:
2020-2021:Ìý
2020: The Sam Fogg Dissertation Prize, 91ÖÆƬ³§
Research Interests
- History of emotions and behaviour (in particular emotional and behavioural ‘norms’)
- History of the philosophy of morality and conscience
- Philosophical approaches to art history
- History of psychology and theories of cognition
- Medical, behavioural, and astrological images of the body and the mind
- Theories of vision and dynamics of sight (particularly bodily, moralising, and curative)
- Social and conceptual history
- European (esp. England, Italy, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia) wall paintings and art 1200-1500
- Patronage and reception
Publications and Reviews
‘The Great Chamber Mural Scheme at Longthorpe Tower’ (Work in progress).
‘R±ð±¹¾±±ð·É: Managing Emotions in the Middle Ages, edited by Flocel Sabaté (Brill, 2025)’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 70 (forthcoming, 2027).
‘Navigating the Challenges of Researching Wall Paintings’,Ìý Records of Care: Informing Approaches to the Conservation of Britain’s Wall Paintings, Proceedings of a symposium held in January 2025 at 91ÖÆƬ³§, edited by Emily Howe (The National Wall Paintings Survey, 91ÖÆƬ³§ online publications, 2025).Ìý
‘R±ð±¹¾±±ð·É: Kate Giles, The Wall Paintings of Pickering Church: Their Discovery, Restoration and Meaning (Shaun Dyas, 2022)’, The Ricardian XXXIV (2024).
Articles for ‘Introducing Medieval Christianity’, by Dr Eleanor Parker (University of Oxford), 2019 – 2020. A website for researchers to provide an accessible introduction to medieval Christianity for an undergraduate audience. See for example, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins and Their Antidotes’. Republished on Oxford Medieval Studies Blog: (2020).
Select Conferences, Workshops, & Talks
‘How to be Good: Moralising Emotion in the Fourteenth Century’, session: ‘Emotional Communities and Communal Emotions’, Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2027
‘The Body in the Middle Ages’, invited speaker at the conference A Medieval Dialogue: art historians and contemporary women sculptors respond to medieval themes from their different perspectives,ÌýThe Public Statues and Sculpture Association (PSSA), 27-28 November 2026
‘Navigating the Challenges of Researching Wall Paintings’, Records of Care: informing approaches to the conservation of Britain’s wall paintings, Symposium, The Courtauld, January 2025
‘Material Crisis, Research Crisis: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Medieval Wall Paintings’, Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2024
‘Full of All the Seven Deadly Sins: What do late medieval ‘Morality’ wall paintings have to do with emotional and bodily perception?’, Medieval Research Seminar, Centre for Medieval Studies University of Exeter, 22 May 2024
‘Confronting Death: Viewing the Three Living and Three Dead at Longthorpe Tower’, Courtauld Postgraduate Symposium, 17 May 2024
‘Self-Identification in a Late Medieval English Wall Painting of Sin’, Authority and Identity in the Middle Ages, Courtauld Medieval Postgraduate Symposium, 15 March 2024
‘Charitable Salvation: Morality and Identity in the Wall Paintings at Trotton’, British Archaeological Association, Chichester Conference, 4-8 September 2023
‘’ Workshop, 91ÖÆƬ³§, 17 May 2023 (CHASE funded) (Paper given: ‘Conservation, Copies, and Conundrums: The Wall Paintings at Corby Glen, Lincolnshire’)
‘The Iconography and Viewership of ‘Morality Images’, c.1300-1450’, 2nd Year Medieval Symposium, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2 May 2023
Curatorial Work, Heritage, and Public Engagement
Research Associate, St Patrick’s Chapel and Mary Magdalene, Glastonbury Abbey, 2026
Doctoral Placement, Buildings Curation, Hampton Court Palace, 2024
Doctoral Placement, Project for visitor interpretation: ‘Viewing the Medieval Wall Paintings at Canterbury’, Archives, Canterbury Cathedral, 2023
Teaching and Academic Activities
Teaching Fellow in the History of Art, 2026
Guest Lecturer, MA Special Option: ‘Art, Scale and the Body in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550’, ‘Diagramming the Body’, Autumn 2025 and ‘Imagining the Cosmos: The Zodiac Man’, Autumn 2026
Associate Lecturer, BA1 Topic Course, ‘Seeing Medieval and Early Renaissance Art’ (designed and delivered), 91ÖÆƬ³§, Autumn 2024
Teaching Assistant, BA2 Physical Histories, 91ÖÆƬ³§, Autumn 2023
Teaching Assistant, Summer University, 91ÖÆƬ³§, Summer 2023
Reviews Editor:ÌýImmediations Postgraduate Journal, 2022 and 2023
Postgraduate Assistant:ÌýNational Wall Paintings Survey Project, 2022
Founder and Co-convenor with Katharine Waldron (University of Oxford and Hamilton Kerr Institute), Medieval Wall Paintings Group, 2023-2025
Memberships
Society for the 91ÖÆƬ³§ of Medieval Emotions
British Archaeological Association