Research

Emotions are a key way that people in the past, as well as people today, experience life. They are also an important way that the self connects to society. My research focuses on intersections between emotions, politics, and law in the Anglo-Norman world. 

Dissertation - "The Heart of the Court: The Role of Emotions in Shaping English Law, 1114-1288"

My dissertation examines the role of emotions in the English Common law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. My research brings together legal treatises, court records, literature, chronicles, and other sources to place law within Anglo-Norman culture. I consider how legal writing often framed emotions, and particularly the affective bonds of family and friends, as obstacles to justice. At the same time, litigants relied on the emotional ties of their social network to move through developing court systems. My dissertation analyzes how the common law was compatible with the emotional frameworks of dispute and honor, a key factor in the law's growth.

Articles

• "Anger Management: Modeling Christian Kingship in Peter of Blois's Dialogus," The Haskins Society Journal 32 (2020)

• "Better than Just Fine: Combining Final Concords with Documentary and Symbolic Practices," The Journal of Legal History (2023)

Public Scholarship

In my public scholarship, I explore medieval culture, law, and emotions, and how they help us to reflect on society today.

• "The Language of Love in a 12th-Century English Law Book" in Psyche, published December 9, 2020

• "True Knights Kiss Their Friends" in Culturico, published August 17, 2021

• "The Charters in the Margin of Matthew Paris's Chronica Maiora" on Medievalists.net, published September 20, 2022