Contributors
Richard N. Bailey
is Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon Civilisation at Newcastle University, where he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor. He has written widely on Anglo-Saxon metalwork, manuscripts, and the relics of Northumbrian saints. His main research interest, however, has been in pre-Norman sculpture on which he has written two overview books – Viking Age Sculpture (Collins, 1980) and England’s Earliest Sculptors (Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 1996) – as well as being the author of two volumes in the British Academy’s Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture series.
Michelle P. Brown
FSA is Professor Emeritus of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Visiting Professor at University College London. She was formerly the Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, a Visiting Professor at Leeds and Baylor Universities and a Senior Research Fellow of Oslo University. A specialist in History, Art History, and Archaeology, she brings these skills to bear upon the art, buildings, and artefacts of an age to give insight into the lives of those who made and used them. She has lectured, published, and broadcast widely. Her books include: The British Library Guide to Historical Scripts, How Christianity Came to Britain and Ireland, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts, The Historical Source-Book for Scribes, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe, The Book and the Transformation of Britain, and Art of the Islands: Celtic, Pictish, Anglo-Saxon and Viking Visual Culture c. 450–1050.
Peter Furniss
spent his professional career in Marine, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering, becoming a Chartered Engineer in 1990 and spending the last 20 years of his career as University Engineer for Wolverhampton. His hobby of rock climbing was cut short by a serious road accident, and he took up calligraphy as a new hobby in the mid-1990s, becoming Chairman of Shropshire Scribes in 2004. His interest in calligraphy has mainly centred around pre-gothic scripts and has led to research of Insular scripts and associated manuscript production, together with the history of the Anglo-Saxon period. Since retirement from engineering in 2008, he has worked as a guide at Shrewsbury Abbey, writes calligraphy-related articles, and teaches calligraphy courses for various community groups. In 2018 he wrote and co-edited the book, 20 Scripts over 20 Centuries to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Shropshire Scribes.
Jane Hawkes
is Professor of Art History at the University of York. She has published widely in the field of Anglo-Saxon art with a specialist interest in the art and architecture of late antiquity and early medieval Europe with reference to the roles of sculpture as public art in the Insular world, the cultural cross-currents between Ireland, Britain, and Europe, and relationships between text and image.
David A. Hinton
is an Emeritus Professor Archaeology, University of Southampton. He was editor of the journal Medieval Archaeology from 1979 to 1989, and is a past President of the Royal Archaeological Institute. His publications include Archaeology, Economy and Society: England from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Century (Routledge, 1990) and Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Maren Clegg Hyer
is Professor of English at Valdosta State University (Georgia, USA). She specializes in researching textiles and other elements of material culture in the literary imagery of early medieval England. Her projects include The Material Culture of Daily Living in Anglo-Saxon England and its subsequent four volumes, most recently Sense and Feeling in Daily Living in the Early Medieval English World (Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World 4) (with Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Liverpool, 2020); Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays in Honour of Gale R. Owen-Crocker (with Jill Frederick, Boydell, 2016); and Studies in Medieval Literature and Lexicology in Honor of Antonette di Paolo Healey (with Haruko Momma and Samantha Zacher, Boydell, 2020).
Catherine E. Karkov
is Chair of Art History in the School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. She has written and edited numerous books and articles on early medieval English Art, including The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell, 2004) and, most recently, Imagining Anglo-Saxon: Utopia, Heterotopia, Dystopia (Boydell 2020). She is currently completing a book on Form and Image in Early Medieval England.
Alexandra Lester-Makin
is a professional embroiderer, trained at the Royal School of Needlework, and a textile archaeologist. She holds a PhD from Manchester University, specializing in early medieval embroidery and is the University of Glasgow’s textiles and leather Post-doctoral Research Associate on the AHRC funded “Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard” Project, led by the National Museum of Scotland. Her book, The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: The Sacred and Secular Power of Embroidery, was published in 2019. She is currently recreating part of the St Cuthbert Maniple, funded by a Janet Arnold Grant (Society of Antiquaries, London). She is co-editing a volume exploring collaborative work methods between researchers, conservators, curators, and makers for studying early medieval textiles. She founded and runs the Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles blog and the Early Medieval Textiles YouTube channel.
Christina Lee
is an Associate Professor in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests have been in the definitions of illness, health, and impairment in Anglo-Saxon England. She has published on leprosy, trauma, and disability, as well as medical textiles. Her work considers the cultural implications of illness and the experiences of those who were affected and she is currently completing a book on Health and Healing in Early Medieval England. In 2013 she began a project with a group of scientists (the ‘AncientBiotics’) to query if there was any efficacy in the medicine in early medieval England which resulted in an ongoing collaboration between the Arts and Sciences and a Royal Society APEX award.
Donncha MacGabhann
is an independent researcher. His professional career in teaching Art History and Art (MA, Fine Art, NCAD, Dublin, 1998), and his work as an artist have significantly informed his study of Insular manuscripts over the past fifteen years. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof Michelle Brown (SAS, Univ. of London, 2016). His research, with a particular focus on the Book of Kells, is ongoing, as is his commitment to communicating this work through publication, lecturing, and presenting papers at major conferences. Publications to date include articles in the proceedings of the most recent International Insular Art Conferences (2017 and 2020).
Éamonn Ó Carragáin
is Professor Emeritus of Old and Middle English at University College Cork, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has published on Beowulf, the Vercelli Book and Old English poetry; artistic, ecclesiastical, and liturgical contacts between the Atlantic Islands and Rome in the early Middle Ages; Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel; the Renaissance church of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice. He is committed to Adult and Continuing Education, and for years ran the UCC Seminar on Medieval Rome based on the British School at Rome; more recent courses have included Paris, Constantinople and Venice.
Gale R. Owen-Crocker
FSA (Editor) is Professor Emerita of The University of Manchester; she was formerly Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture and Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. She co-founded and for 15 years co-edited the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles; and directed the Manchester Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project, producing the database
Frances Pritchard
is an Honorary Research Fellow of The University of Manchester. As a museum professional her career encompassed sixteen years in the Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, and twenty-three years as Curator (Textiles) at the Whitworth Art Gallery. She has also acted as a consultant on textiles to the British Museum, National Museum of Ireland and English Heritage. Most of her many publications have focused on textiles from excavations in London, Dublin and Egypt.
Penelope Walton Rogers
is proprietor of The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory, Visiting Fellow at the University of York, and currently serves as Chair of the Early Textiles Study Group. As an archaeological project manager she has brought to completion a series of excavation reports and as an academic collaborator she participates in funded European research projects. Her particular research interests lie in the reconstruction of women’s lives from the archaeological record; regional, cultural, and political borders; migration patterns; costume and textiles; and the many facets of ritual practice and religion.