Dr Katherine Weikert

Biography

Dr Katherine Weikert is Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval European History and was the 2018-19 University Early Career Research Fellow. She has published extensively in Anglo-Norman and early English history, with her first monograph, Authority, Space and Gender in the Norman Conquest Era, c. 900-c. 1200, released by Boydell & Brewer in 2020. Her main areas of research examine the connections between gender, space and authority in England and Normandy ca 900-1200, female hostageships in the central Middle Ages, and the political uses of the medieval past.

Katherine gained her degrees at Evansville (USA) (BA with minors in Classical Archaeology and Music), York (MA) and Winchester (PhD). She has also worked in Collections capacities at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum. Previous academic roles include at the Department of Continuing Education at Oxford University, Bath Spa University, and Harlaxton College, University of Evansville.

Katherine's areas of teaching are in both History and Classical Studies, including

• Medieval hostageships (3rd year comparative)
• Early medieval memory and commemoration (1st year core)
• Twelfth century political and social history, and material culture studies (2nd year and MA options)
• Eighteenth century architectural history (Classical Studies reception)

Katherine enjoys sharing her research and love of history and archaeology with a wider audience. She regularly appears on television sharing her research, including for the Channel Four series Britain's Most Historic Towns (2018) (Find out more), Smithsonian UK's Mystic Britain (2019) and BBC Four's Bone Detectives (2020). Her research featured prominently in the recent University exhibition Images of Research, held in June 2018 in the Winchester Discovery Centre. (Find out more.) In Sept. 2018, she was one of the University experts joining Prof. Michael Wood for the event 'The Legacy of Alfred: the Anglo-Saxons and the birth of England'. Find out more. In October 2019, she delivered the Keynote Lecture at the annual King Alfred Weekend in Winchester (find out more). She also regularly gives historic tours for Winchester Heritage Open Days and BBC History Weekends.

Higher Education Teaching Qualification: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Areas of expertise

• Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman social history and archaeology
• Gender history and archaeology
• Social interpretations of space and buildings
• Material culture, memory and history writing in the central middle ages
• Public history and visual representations of the past

Publications

Monograph

• Authority, Space and Gender in the Norman Conquest Era (Boydell, 2020)

Edited volumes

• Early Medieval Winchester: Communities, Authority and Power in an Urban Space, 800-1200. Co-edited with Ryan Lavelle and Simon Roffey (Oxbow, 2021)
• Medieval Intersections. Co-edited with Elena Woodacre (Berghahn, 2021)
• Buildings in Society II: International Studies in the Historic Era. Co-edited with Göran Tagesson, Liz Thomas, Per Cornell and Mark Gardiner (Archaeopress, 2020) 
• Medieval Hostageship c. 700 - c.1500: Hostage, Captive, Prisoner of War, Guarantee, Peacemaker, eds M. Bennett and K. Weikert (London: Routledge, 2017)

Journal articles

• 'The Biography of a Place: Faccombe Netherton, Hampshire, ca 900 - 1200.' Anglo-Norman Studies 37 (2015), 257-84.
• ‘Gender and Status in the Medieval World,’ co-written with Elena Woodacre. Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historique 42:1 (2016), 1-7.
• ‘Valiant Losers,’ History Today, October 2016.

Book chapters

• 'More than Material: Inventories as a Signal of Distress at Ely in the Post-Conquest Period,' for Laura Cleaver and Kathryn Geary (eds), Lost Medieval Materiality (Boydell, 2022)

• 'A more noble edifice: Eadmer's Canterbury,' for Charles C. Rozier and Giles Gaspar (eds), Companion to Eadmer of Canterbury, Anselm Studies series (Brill, 2022)

• 'Eadwig has a Threesome: Gender and the Breaking of Authority in the Tenth Century,' for Christopher Riedel and Mary Blanchard (eds), Edmund, Eadred and Eadwig: Forgotten Kings of the Tenth Century (Boydell, 2022)

• 'Landscape and Settlement,' for Benjamin Pohl (ed) Companion to the Age of William the Conqueror (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

• 'Ely Cathedral and the Afterlife of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth,' in Alexander Langlands and Ryan Lavelle (eds) The Land of the English King: Studies in Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England in Honour of Professor Barbara Yorke (Brill, 2020), 555-581. [Open access ebook available as a pdf download here: https://brill.com/view/title/35112]
  

• ‘Of Pots and Pins: The Households at Late Anglo-Saxon Faccombe Netherton, Hampshire,’ in Ben Jervis (ed) The Middle Ages Revisited: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Medieval Southern England Presented to Prof. David A. Hinton (Archaeopress, 2018), 58-70.

• 'Creating a Choreographed Space: Anglo-Norman Keeps ca. 1100-1250,' in L. Thomas (ed.), Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era (Archaeopress, 2018), 127-40.

• 'Feminism, Fiction and the Empress Matilda,' in J. North, K. Alvestad and E. Woodacre (eds), Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers: Gender, Sex, and Power in Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2018).

• 'The Princesses who might have been hostages: the custody and marriages of Margaret and Isabella of Scotland, 1209-1220s,' in M. Bennett and K. Weikert (eds), Medieval Hostageship c. 700 - c.1500 (Routledge, 2017), 122-39.

• 'The State of Play: Medieval Hostageship in Modern Scholarship,' co-authored with M. Bennett, in M. Bennett and K. Weikert (eds), Medieval Hostageship c. 700 - c.1500 (Routledge, 2017), 1-14.

• 'The (truncated) existence of Alice de Solers Rufus née de Huntingfield: medieval hostage, wife and widow,' in R. Smith and G. Watson (eds), Writing the Lives of People and Things, AD 500 - 1700: A Multi-disciplinary Future for Biography (Ashgate, 2016), 13-27

• 'Fulfilling her duties as wife': the Empress Matilda, conception and motherhood in popular fiction, 1970 to the present,' in: C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Eras (Palgrave, 2016), 225-46.

• 'Place and Prestige: Enacting and Displaying Authority in English Domestic Spaces during the Central Middle Ages,' in S. Stull (ed.), From West to East: Current Approaches in Medieval Archaeology (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014), 96-120.

In preparation

• Power and the Disruption of Sacred Space in the Middle Ages, co-edited with Gustav Zamore (proposed to Boydell & Brewer)
• 'Independence in Stone: The Early Medieval Past in Anglo-Norman Palatinate Bishoprics,' for Power and the Disruption of Sacred Space

Reviews

• Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate, The Medieval Review, March 2022
• 'Aethelred the Unready by Levi Roach (review),' The Medieval Review, 17 November 2017
• 'Cnut by Timothy Bolton (review),' History: New Reviews of Books 46:1 (2018), 51-2.
• 'Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology, eds Elizabeth Pierce et al. (review),' Antiquaries Journal 98 (2018).

Selected conference presentations

• 'Things Remembered: The Inventories of Liber Eliensis,' Leeds International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 2019
• 'We can be Heroes: Material Culture and the Creation of Byrhtnoth,' Leeds International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2018
• 'Space, Gender and Authority in the Manorial Settings of England, ca 900-1200,' Buildings in Society International III, University of Stockholm, May 2017
• 'A Day in the Life of the Men on the Watch: Motte d'Olivet, Normandy, 1040s-1050s,' Gender and Medieval Studies Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, January 2017
• 'The Past in the Present: Memorialization and Identities at Ely Cathedral in the Twelfth Century,' invited speaker, Medieval Archaeology Seminars, Oxford University, November 2016
• ‘Buildings, Spaces and Societies: Manorial Sites in Normandy, ca 1050-1200,’ European Association of Archaeologists Annual Conference, Vilnius University, August 2016
• Public History Round Table, Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, July 2016
• ‘Space and Material Culture,’ 1016/1066: New Perspectives Round Table, Leeds International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2016
• ‘The Failed Men: Representing Gender and Defeat,’ 1016, 1066: Conquest Conference, Oxford University, July 2016
• ‘The Past in the Present, the Foreign as Familiar: Memory and Memorialization at Ely Cathedral in the Twelfth Century,’ Annual Medieval Studies Institute Symposium, Indiana University (USA), April 2016
• 'Space, Politics and Monastic Society: Ely Cathedral in the 1150s,' invited speaker, Medieval Seminar Series, University of Cardiff, October 2015
• 'The Empress Matilda, feminism and popular fiction, 1970 to the present,' The Middle Ages in the Modern World Biennial Conference, University of Lincoln, July 2015
• 'The Afterlife of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth,' University of Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Annual Easter Symposium, April 2015
• 'Everything in its right place: the curated space of the elite Anglo-Saxon household.' Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2014
• 'Familial Identity in Curated Spaces: The Use of Textiles from the Anglo-Saxon Wills.' International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University (USA), May 2014
• 'Free from the ties that bind: Family, hostageship and the loss of Normandy 1204-1205.' Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2013
• 'Privacy, prestige and perception: the use of space and gendered authority in the Central Middle Ages.' Gender and Medieval Conference: Gender and Material Culture, Bath Spa University, January 2013
• 'If they duly obey me: settlements and strategies in Anglo-Saxon wills.' University of Southampton Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture Research Day, January 2012
• 'Two women of Wessex: Landscape, gender and memory in the tenth century.' British Federation of Women Graduates Annual Research Day, June 2011
• 'Two women of Wessex: Parallel lives in the tenth century.' 23rd Annual Medieval Symposium, Indiana University (USA), April 2011