Staff Profile of Dr Sue Johns

Name:

Dr Sue Johns

Position:

Lecturer in Medieval History

Email:

s.m.johns@bangor.ac.uk

Location:

Room 222.4 Main Arts

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 382149

Areas of Teaching & Supervision

BA

Apocalypse Then: The Disastrous History of the Fourteenth Century
Britain c. 950-1220
Gender, Culture and Society in the Twelfth Century
The Norman Conquest
The Reign of King Stephen 1135-54
Britain 450-1000

MA

Gender, Conquest and Power: Women in the Twelfth-Century

Current Research

Sue Johns researches the high middle ages, specifically in relating perspectives on gender to historiographies of lordship, power & authority, and to those of conquest and imperialism. Her work is concerned with the nature of lordship and landed society in the High Middle Ages. Her book on Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm contributes to the history of medieval women in general and to the influence of gender on lordship in particular. Her research therefore offers a reinterpretation of the factors at play in the development of events in the period from the Conquest to the early thirteenth century. Her current research on Nest of Deheubarth discusses gendered perspectives on power and politics, imperialism and nationalism. She continues to research charter material to elaborate new approaches to the reading of charters and seals from a gendered perspective. Other areas of interest include the importance of charter evidence and the Norman influence in the Channel Islands, as well as cruelty and ethnicity in the twelfth century.

She is also co-investigator on a major AHRC-funded research project in collaboration with Aberystwyth University. The Seals in Medieval Wales project began in 2009 and will digitise the seals held in the National Library of Wales. There will be a major exhibition of seals at the National Library in 2012 and a conference at Aberystwyth which has international speakers from around the world. For further information about the project see www.imems.ac.uk/medievalwelshsealsinthenlw.php

Key & Recent Publications

Books

2003 Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm (Manchester University Press, Manchester)

Forthcoming

Beauty and the Feast: the cultural constructions of female beauty and social interaction in twelfth-century Wales, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium (2011)
Nest of Deheubarth: reading female power in the historiography of Wales.
Normandy, the Channel Islands, and female power in Wace.
Nest: Women, Conquest and Change in Britain in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (University of Wales Press, Cardiff)

Articles

2004 ‘Alice , suo jure countess of Eu (d. 1246)’, in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47204]
2004 ‘Briouze, Loretta de, countess of Leicester (d. in or after 1266)’, in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47212]
2004 ‘Haie, Nicola de la (d. 1230)’, in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47223]
2004 ‘Matilda, countess of Chester (d. 1189)’, in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47213]
2004 ‘Percy, Matilda de, countess of Warwick (d. 1204)’, in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47214]
2004 ‘Warenne, Isabel de, suo jure countess of Surrey (d. 1203)’, in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28733]
2001 ‘Poetry and Prayer: Women and Politics of Spiritual Relationships in the early Twelfth Century’, European Review of History – Revue européenne d’histoire, 8 (1), 7-22
1995 ‘The Wives and Widows of the Earls of Chester, 1100-1252: the Charter Evidence,’ Haskins Society Journal, 7, 117-32