Dr Katharine Sykes

• DPhil, Medieval History, University of Oxford
• MA Late Medieval Studies, University of York
• BA (Hons) Modern History, University of Oxford

I did my undergraduate degree in History at Oxford, moved to the University of York for a MA in Medieval Studies, then returned to Oxford for a DPhil in Medieval History. I then held a series of teaching and research posts in Oxford before coming to Birmingham in September 2016.

I teach on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate modules, including Discovering the Middle Ages, Approaches to Medieval Studies, and an optional module, The Making of England, 850-1100.

I am interested in supervising research on early medieval gender and sexuality, religious communities and institutional development.

My research focuses on the creation and regulation of communities in the early and central middle ages. In particular, I am interested in double monasteries – religious communities which housed both men and women – and the ways in which the monastic life was gendered in both theory and practice. I draw on a variety of methodological approaches, from anthropology and sociology to psychoanalytic theory, to explore a broad range of textual and material sources. I have recently finished my second book, which explores the relationship between monasteries and families in Early Medieval England.