Medieval and Early Modern Studies research group
About us
The Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) research group draws upon UWA's nationally acclaimed research and teaching expertise in the area of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. We promote excellence in all aspects of research into the pre-modern world and its modern afterlife.
MEMS staff represent a broad range of disciplines, including Archaeology, Classics and Ancient History, English and Cultural Studies, European Languages and Studies, History of Art, History, Medicine, Music, and Theatre. We offer quality teaching and award-winning supervision at all levels of study from undergraduate to PhD.
We welcome and support visiting students and scholars and offer a vibrant and engaging calendar of events.
Our aims
Our primary research mission is to create new models of collaborative interdisciplinary enquiry within this broad field.
Goals
- We foster connections between scholars of Medieval and Early Modern Studies across disciplines.
- We promote the study of Medieval and Early Modern Studies within relevant disciplines.
- We promote events of interest to the broad academic community.
Community engagement
- Renaissance Moved Readings
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Overseen by Dr Brid Phillips (project director) and Dr Steve Chinna (staging director), the Renaissance Moved Readings Project continues the tradition of informal, participatory, fast-paced and usually hilarious readings of Shakespeare’s plays. Events in 2019 included:
- Much Ado About Nothing (a witty battle of the sexes is waged; comedy ensues), 28 March 2019.
- King Lear (a king foolishly divides his kingdom among his daughters; tragedy ensues), 11 April 2019.
- The Tempest (on an enchanted island, magical and muggle characters meet; romance ensues), 16 May 2019.
- Recent events, talks and seminars
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- MEMS will host the ANZAMEMS (Australia and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies) conference in February 2021.
- IAS/MEMS/PMRG/CHE Public Lecture by Diana Barnes, ‘Margaret Cavendish's, Life of Newcastle (1667), a Wifely Intervention in the Making of History’, Wednesday 16 October, 2019.
- IAS/MEMS/PMRG/CHE Masterclass, Michael D. Barbezat (ACU), Diana Barnes (UNE), Michael Champion (ACU), Riikka Miettinen (Centre of Excellence in the History of Experience (HEX) at the University of Tampere, Finland), ‘ Social Wellbeing: Emotion and community’, 18 October 2019.
- Mental Health in the Medieval and Early Modern World’ MEMS/ PMRG Conference, 19 October 2019.
- PMRG AGM and Lecture: Dr Chris Mallan, ‘“Go Draw Your Gourds!”: Some Editors and Readers of Cassius Dio in the 15th and 16th Centuries’, 18 March 2019.
- Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery Friday Talk, Co-Sponsored by CHE: Emeritus Professor Andrew Lynch from English and Literary Studies, ‘Starcraft and Cosmic Music’, 22 March, 2019.
- CMEMS Lund Seminar: Dr Kajsa Brilkman, ‘Luther in Transit. Translation, Compilation and Luther's Collected Works in Swedish during the 16th and 17th Century’, 1 April 2019.
Our researchers
- UWA staff
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- Dr Nicholas Bannan
Music and liturgy; music in medieval life -
Dr Andrew Broertjes
Medieval political history; Wars of the Roses; nationalism - Professor Susan Broomhall
Women and gender; history of emotions; material culture; cultural contact; heritage of the early modern world - Associate Professor Steve Chinna
Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre and performance; creative writing for stage and screen; postmodern and modern theatre - Dr Kirk Essary
Sixteenth-century intellectual and religious history; classical tradition; history of the Bible; Erasmus; Calvin; history of emotions - Dr Marina Gerzic
Shakespeare studies; performance studies; adaptation and reception studies; royal studies; comics and graphic novels; children’s literature; disability studies; music in film; and cultural studies. - Dr Paul Gibbard
early modern intellectual history; travel, science and the emotions - Professor Yasmin Haskell
Latin humanism, Jesuits, history of emotions and psychology, the reception of classical authors - Professor Andrew Lynch
Literature and culture of later medieval England (English, French and Latin); medievalism; post-medieval reception and imaginative recreation of the Middle Ages; war in medieval literature; history of emotions; modern Irish literature and Australian poetry - Professor John Melville-Jones
Ancient coinage; Byzantine and Venetian historiography - Dr Susanne Meurer
Art historiography, prints and printmaking, Northern Renaissance and Baroque - Dr Jane-Heloise Nancarrow
3D reproduction and visualisation for museums and heritage; material translation of classical world in the middle ages; Apulian architecture of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II - Professor Alistair Paterson
Archaeology; Dutch shipwrecks; maritime archaeology; museum collections - Dr Brid Phillips
Shakespeare, history of emotions, medieval and early modern literature - Professor Richard Read
European art history, particularly word-image oppositions, complex images in global contexts, European Grand Tour, Romantic art criticism, European origins of American and Australian landscape painting, medieval and Renaissance aspects of nineteenth-century and modernist art and art theory. - Dr Stephanie Tarbin
Late medieval and early modern social history; history of gender and sexualities; history of families and households; urban history; history of emotions; special interests include moral regulation, masculinities and children’s experiences - Associate Professor Jacqueline Van Gent
History of gender, body and the self in early modern Europe; cultural exchange; gender and religious change in Australia; history of emotions - Dr Arvi Wattel
Italian Renaissance art and architecture; early modern courts of northern Italy; Dutch-Asian cultural exchange in the seventeenth century - Dr Bob Weston
Seventeenth- to nineteenth-century European medical history - Professor Bob White
Shakespeare; Shakespearean cinema; Renaissance literature; pacifism and human rights in literature and film history; history of emotions - Associate Professor Suzanne Wijsman
Medieval musical iconography; medieval Hebrew manuscript artwork production and materiality; Jewish-Christian interactions in medieval visual cultures; history of the cello and early violin family; historically informed performance of pre-modern music
- Dr Nicholas Bannan
Featured researcher profiles
- Dr Brid Phillips works in the field of medical humanities, linking her research on early modern emotions to the study of empathy in real-world, contemporary situations.
- Professor Yasmin Haskell holds the Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Latin Humanism. Her research focuses on neo-Latin studies, the reception of classical authors, the history of emotions and psychiatry, and early modern Jesuits.
Related groups
News and events
2021 ANZAMEMS conference
The next Australia and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (ANZAMEMS) conference will be hosted by the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
Read moreShakespeare Bulletin On The Move
Q&A between Johns Hopkins University Press and MEMS Director Associate Professor Kathryn Prince
Read more