Dr Ana de Oliveira Dias

Personal web page

Contact Dr Ana de Oliveira Dias (email at a.p.c.dias@durham.ac.uk)

About me

My primary areas of research are visual and intellectual culture in medieval Iberia and Continental Europe in the period c. AD 700-1100. I also have a strong interest in manuscript studies, Latin palaeography and material culture studies.

I completed my Ph.D at Durham University in 2019, and I've been lecturing in the Department of History since 2018. 

My previous research investigated the mechanisms through which the language of Scripture was interpreted and translated into visual imagery in the context of monastic communities in tenth- and eleventh-century Iberia, with a particular focus on the Hispanic Beatus manuscripts: a corpus of illuminated manuscripts containing one of the most comprehensive medieval cycles of Apocalypse imagery.

I am currently exploring ideas about book design in early medieval Iberia and how the visual elements included in these manuscripts shaped the experience of devotional reading.

Department responsibilities

I am a tutor in Early Medieval History in the Department of History. I convene the first-year module titled 'The Birth of Western Society: AD 300- AD 1050' and the Making History strand 'The Arab Conquest of Iberia and the early Medieval West'; and I also tutor on the MA in History core module 'Themes, Readings, Sources'.

I am also resposible for directing the IMEMS Latin Palaeography Summer School.

Publications

A. DIAS, 'The Iberian Peninsula and the trans-Pyrenean world: assessing change in dress and horsemanship through manuscript illumination', Anuario de Estudios Medievales (2020). 

Research Projects

Department of History

• Hunter 100

Research Interests

• Early Medieval Iberian and European History
• History of Ideas
• History of the book
• Medieval intellectual culture
• Medieval liturgy and theology
• Medieval monasticism
• Medieval visual and material culture

Selected Grants