University of Groningen

Chair, Medieval English Literature and Culture, English

Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture

About

I study the maritime, economic, legal, and European contexts of premodern English writings. In addition, I am interested in periodisation, translation theory, the formation of collective identity, and the literary history of romance motifs.

Projects:

LAW, READING, AND IDEOLOGY
I am completing two law-related projects at the moment: Written Culture and the Common Law in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries, financed by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the related L’anglicité et la langue du droit, 1463-1536, financed by a grant from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC). Together, these two projects examine how late-medieval and early modern legal writings participated in complex ideological processes that brought about a secular understanding of Englishness.

THE RICHARD HAKLUYT PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS EDITORIAL PROJECT
The Hakluyt Society, the National Maritime Museum, The Centre for Travel Writing Studies, Nottingham Trent University, and the National University of Ireland, Galway, are collaborating on a critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598–1600) [The Hakluyt Editorial Project]. The edition will be published by Oxford University Press and is scheduled to appear in 14 volumes between 2014 and 2016. I will be editing the first and coediting the second volume.

MERCANTILE COMMUNITIES AND THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE
My next project will focus on the mercantile communities of Northern Europe and their production of culture between 1300 and 1600. It will involve researchers working on literature, art, sociology, and economic history.

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