Eagle Eye Magazine Issue 1 2023

understanding the whole connectedness of society and not just
learn about slices of things through time. Clearly, we have to
break things down into themes and topics to teach them, but we
need to look at context in order to bring it all back together. Life
was as complicated in the past as it is now, so we need to think
about people as individuals with specific experiences shaped
by who they met and their environments. We ask questions
about background to figure out the larger picture.
More broadly, the human element
in History as a discipline is the fact
that you are being forced to grapple
with other people: people who are
different and separated by time and
space. We ask our students to explain
why things happened the way they
did, and they don’t always think
about how people at the time might
have explained their own behaviour.
If people then did things that appear
strange to us now, to begin to explain
them, we need to work with the grain
of their thought to find out what’s
going on. All of this is good practice
for thinking about being a person
and dealing with other people. I
teach my students to be intellectually
empathetic and willing to incorporate
other, often very different, points of
view in our explanations. Too often
people assume those in the past
behaved and thought the way we do.
In a recent article you argue against
the popular view that people in the
early Middle Ages didn’t draw a
clear distinction between religious
and secular life; what led you to
Stained glass at Jarrow | The World According to Bede
this conclusion and what are the key
considerations when making this assessment?
The assumption that people didn’t divide religion and non-religion
before a certain period in time felt very generalised to me, as
though at some defined point a switch was flicked, and people
then did things a whole new way. I am always suspicious of grand
narrative theories and so I explored the possibility that things
were messier and more complicated than this. This was what I
saw reflected in the sources I read. People are adaptable: there can
be shifts in where the predominance of focus lies but this does
not preclude the idea that people have always used a distinction
between religious and secular life when it suited them to do so.
How have other disciplines influenced your research?
I started out as a Literature and History student, so I have always
been interested in reading source material. I am very open to
‘non-hard’ historical sources. We can get evidence from poetry
and cultural artefacts in general. I am interested in reading
anthropology and religious studies: my interest in religion means
there’s many disciplines to take into account. People everywhere
always talk about the past so there’s an inevitable blurring of
the lines between different disciplines. I am interested in human
society on a larger scale then just my specialist period so I want to
engage with bigger ideas about humanity and see what the study
of my period can contribute to the wider story.
What excites you about history at Queen’s?
Undergraduate teaching is at the core of what I do and, for me,
the tutorial system remains the most
rewarding and meaningful way of
teaching history. I joined Queen’s
in October 2020, in the middle of
a lockdown. It was a happy accident
that small-group teaching was
‘COVID-19 secure’ so we were able
to continue to a large extent. This
brought home to me how personal our
style of teaching is: we get to know
our students rather than teaching
them online in large groups. Each
year we think hard about the different
cohorts and how we can enable them
to flourish.
What do you enjoy about teaching?
Seeing people change. Students change
very dramatically between the ages
of 18 and 21: they change their minds,
and they change themselves. The
College community creates a special
relationship where you devote a lot
of time to individual students and
feel very connected to doing the good
work of teaching, helping students
find their niche and nurturing their
passions. You are teaching them, not
just teaching.
What will you be working on over the Long Vac?
After exam board, I will get back to my book, which is due
in September 2024. The book examines the rise of Christian
Kingship and is related to my earlier research on de-secularisation
in Europe in the Middle Ages. Essentially it asks: why did people
think you had to be a good Christian to be a good ruler?
What’s your favourite place in Oxford?
The Lower Reading Room in the Old Bod is a very special place.
It’s where I worked for my doctorate and after that on Saturdays
for my research. My primary sources are on the shelves there.
Apart from that, I like the green spaces: the meadows and the
parks. So, reading and then relaxation!
Can you give us a book recommendation?
The book I recommend to every undergraduate is The Dawn of
Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It’s an energising
read that prompts us to think about big historical changes that
have led us to where we are today.
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