Staff profile

The Formation of Ethnic Identity in Anglo-Saxon England and Medieval Iceland

I am a PhD student under the supervision of Dr Foxhall Forbes and Dr Barraclough.

My research focuses on the nature of ethnic identity and the process of its formation through two case studies: Anglo-Saxon England and Medieval Iceland. My focus is on the texts produced in the later Anglo-Saxon period (871-1066) and Icelandic Commonwealth (1100-1269) that discuss or define ethnic identity. These texts include histories, such as the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and Íslendingabók, and literary texts, such as the Icelandic sagas and the Anglo-Saxon Exodus. By using these texts, I intend to apply the scholarship of the last few decades on late antique ethnogenesis to the medieval period, where we have the benefit of written sources.

My previous research has focused on Beowulf as an artefact of Anglo-Scandinavian cultural interaction, and on the use of Beowulf in The Lord of the Rings. My undergraduate degree was in English Literature and I intend to use an interdisciplinary approach when studying sources for my PhD.