Professor Veronica O’Mara

Research interests

My research focuses on the interlinked areas of preaching, hagiography, Birgittine studies, female literacy, and the relationship of manuscript and print in medieval and early modern England. Above all, I always work on primary manuscript, early printed, and archival sources and routinely strive to situate my research in a comparative European context. So far I have organised fourteen national and international conference events; worked with twelve different scholars; produced about a dozen books and over thirty book chapters or articles; and have been associated with the delivery of over sixty conference papers world-wide, as well as being responsible for grant income from eighteen national and international bodies for ten research projects. I collaborate with scholars at home and abroad, and through my work, particularly in sermon studies and nuns’ literacies in Medieval Europe, I have built up a network of medievalist contacts in Art History, English, History, Languages, and Theology departments throughout Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan. 

Current research is focused on the production (together with Professor Virginia Blanton, University of Missouri-Kansas City) of ‘Lyves and Dethes’ for Medieval English Nuns: An Edition of the Saints’ Lives in Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604, a unique collection of mainly female prose saints’ lives for women religious in East Anglia in the fifteenth century. Alongside this, I am editing (with Dr Patricia Stoop, Universiteit Antwerpen) Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Transformative Preaching Between Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550), a collection of essays that concentrates on the mass media of the age in Europe, with essays on Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Latin, Italian, Romanian, and Swedish sermon materials. Future research will include an edition of Thomas Wimbledon’s Doomsday sermon in manuscript and early print for Middle English Texts (Heidelberg: Winter) and a study of The Interaction of Manuscript and Print in British Library, MS Lansdowne 379 for Texts and Transitions: Studies in the History of Manuscripts and Printed Books (Turnhout: Brepols). 

Funding Obtained for Research Activities

Arts and Humanities Research Council (twice); Bibliographical Society; British Academy (three occasions); COST; Ferens Education Trust; Folger Shakespeare Library (US); Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/Research Foundation Flanders (Belgium); Huntington Library (US); Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society; Modern Humanities Research Association; Missouri Education Board (US); National University of Ireland; Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (US); Society for Medieval Languages and Literature; Swedish Institute (London); Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium); University of Leeds; University of Missouri-Kansas City (US).

Editorial and Advisory Work

Joint editor of Medieval Sermon Studies (1990–95, with Simon Forde, University of Leeds; 1995–2010, with Professor Carolyn Muessig, University of Bristol)
Member of the editorial board of SERMO: Studies on Patristic, Medieval and Reformation Sermons and Preaching (2005–)
Member of the international Advisory Committee of the Index of Middle English Prose (2016–)

Publications

Books

‘Lyves and Dethes’ for Medieval English Nuns: An Edition of the Saints’ Lives in Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604, ed. by Veronica O’Mara and Virginia Blanton, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming)

Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Transformative Preaching Between Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550), ed. by Veronica O’Mara and Patricia Stoop, Sermo (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming)

ed., Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue (with Virginia Blanton, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Patricia Stoop, Universiteit Antwerpen), Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 28 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017)

ed., Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue (with Virginia Blanton, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Patricia Stoop, Universiteit Antwerpen) Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015)

ed., Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell (with Martha W. Driver, Pace University), Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)

ed., Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue (with Virginia Blanton and Patricia Stoop), Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)

ed., Leeds Studies in English: Essays in Honour of Oliver Pickering (with Janet Burton, and William Marx, University of Wales Trinity St David), n.s. 41 (2010) 

A Repertorium of Middle English Prose Sermons (with Suzanne Paul, University of Hull), Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 1, 4 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007)

ed., Literature, Readers and Dialogue: Essays by and in Reply to Douglas Jefferson (with Janet Clare, University College Dublin) (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006)

Four Middle English Sermons Edited from British Library MS Harley 2268, Middle English Texts, 33 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2002)

ed., The Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden into the Medieval European Vernaculars (with Bridget Morris, University of Hull), The Medieval Translator, 7 (Brepols: Tumhout, 2000)

The Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist XIII, A Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Prose in Lambeth Palace Library (with O. S. Pickering, University of Leeds) (Brewer: Cambridge, 1999)

A Study and Edition of Selected Middle English Sermons: Richard Alkerton’s Easter Week Sermon Preached at St Mary Spital in 1406, a Sermon on Sunday Observance, and a Nunnery Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption, Leeds Texts and Monographs, n.s. 13 (Leeds: School of English, 1994)

Articles and Book Chapters

‘Preaching to Nuns in the Norwich Diocese on the Eve of the Reformation: The Evidence from Visitation Records’, in Monastic Life in the Medieval British Isles, ed. by Karen Stöber, Julie Kerr, and Emilia Jamroziak (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018), pp. 189–212

The Lyfe of Seynt Birgette: An Edition of a Swedish Saint’s Life for an English Audience’ (with Ann M. Hutchison, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto), in ‘Booldly but meekly’: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, ed. by Catherine Batt and René Tixier, The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 173–208

‘Problems in Indexing and Editing Middle English Prayer as Illustrated by the Chester Processional Texts’, in Editing and Interpretation of Middle English Texts: Essays in Honour of William Marx, ed. by Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu, Texts and Transitions, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 249–65

‘Scribal Engagement and the Late Medieval English Nun: The Quest Concludes?’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue, ed. by Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 28 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 187–208

‘A Syon Scribe Revealed by Her Signature: Mary Nevel and Her Manuscripts’, in Continuity and Change: Papers from the Birgitta Conference at Dartington 2015, ed. by Elin Andersson, Claes Gejrot, E. A. Jones, and Mia Åkestam, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikivets Akademien, Konferenser, 93 (Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikivets Akademien, 2017), pp. 283–308

‘Nuns and Writing in Late Medieval England: The Quest Continues’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue, ed. by Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 123–47

‘A Victorian Response to a Fifteenth-Century Incunabulum: The “Boy Bishop” Sermon and How it was First Edited’, in Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell, ed. by Martha W. Driver and Veronica O’Mara, Sermo, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) pp. 351–90

‘The Late Medieval English Nun and Her Scribal Activity: A Complicated Quest’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue, ed. by Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 69–93

‘Saint Birgitta of Sweden’s Life in a Middle English Context’, in The Birgittine Experience: Papers from the Birgitta Conference in Stockholm 2011, ed. by Claes Gejrot, Mia Åkestam, and Roger Andersson, Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, Konferenser 82 (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2013), pp. 54–72

‘The Last Judgement in Medieval English Prose Sermons: An Overview’, in The Last Judgement in Medieval Preaching, ed. by Thom Mertens, Maria Sherwood-Smith, Michael Mecklenburg and Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 19–41

‘Thinking Afresh about Thomas Wimbledon’s Paul’s Cross Sermon of c. 1387’, Leeds Studies in English: Essays in Honour of Oliver Pickering, ed. by Janet Burton, William Marx, and Veronica O’Mara, n.s. 41 (2010), 155–71

‘Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604: Repackaging Female Saints' Lives for the Fifteenth-Century English Nun’ (with Virginia Blanton, University of Missouri-Kansas City), Journal of the Early Book Society, 13 (2010), 237–43

‘A Preliminary List of Patristic and Other Authors Cited in the Middle English Prose Sermon: An Introduction to an Online Resource in Progress’ (with Suzanne Paul, University of Hull), Medieval Sermon Studies, 51 (2007), 41–79

‘ “Go 3e curselynges into euerlasting fier”: Doomsday in Middle English Sermons’, in Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Conference, ed. by Nigel Morgan, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 12 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2004), pp. 277–91

‘ “Perauenture the wynde had blowe ouer the leef’: Caxton, The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, and the Woman Question’, Poetica, An International Journal of Linguistic and Literary Studies, 49 (1998), 27–47

‘Preaching to Nuns in Late Medieval England’, in Medieval Monastic Preaching, ed. by Carolyn Muessig, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 93–119

‘‘Saints’ Plays and Preaching: Theory and Practice in Late Middle English Sanctorale Sermons’, Leeds Studies in English: Essays in Honour of Peter Meredith, ed. by Catherine Batt, n. s. 39 (1998), 257–74

‘Manuscript and Print: The Relationship between “The Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters” and The Seven Sheddings of the Blood of Jesus Christ’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 110 (1997), 23–35

‘Late Middle English Sermons on the Apostles: A Survey’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 111 (1997), 147–63

‘Female Scribal Ability and Scribal Activity in Late Medieval England: The Evidence?’, Leeds Studies in English, n. s. 27 (1996), 87–130

‘ “The hallowyng of the tabernakyil of owre sawle” according to the Preacher of the Middle English Sermons in BL MS Harley 2268’, in Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons, ed. by Beverley Mayne Kienzle and others (Louvain-la-Neuve: FIDEM, 1996), pp. 229–42

‘Another copy of “Who-so him bethouete / inwardlich & ofte” ‘Notes and Queries, 240 (1995), 30–31

‘The Twelvefold Division of the Red Sea: A Late Middle English Example’, Medieval Sermon Studies, 30 (1992), 63–64

‘From Print to Manuscript: The Golden Legend and British Library Lansdowne MS 379’, Leeds Studies in English, n. s. 23 (1992), 81–104

‘A Middle English Text written by a Female Scribe’, Notes and Queries, 235 (1990), 396–98

Entries in the International Medieval Bibliography 22: 1 (Leeds, 1989)

‘An Unknown Middle English Translation of a Brigittine Work’, Notes and Queries, 234 (1989), 162–64

‘A Checklist of Unedited Late Middle English Sermons that occur Singly or in Small Groups’, Leeds Studies in English, n. s. 19 (1988), 141–66

‘A Middle English Sermon Preached by a Sixteenth-Century “Athiest”: A Preliminary Account’, Notes and Queries, 232 (1987), 183–85

‘A Middle English Versified Penance Composed of Popular Prayer Tags’, Notes and Queries, 231 (1986), 449–50
 

Qualifications

• PhD in Middle English, University of Leeds
• MA Old and Middle English (Hons), University College Dublin (UCD), National University of Ireland
• BA Old and Middle English, and Modern English (First Class), UCD, National University of Ireland

Student education

In my time at the universities of Dublin (University College), Hull (where I became Professor of Medieval English Literature in 2015), Keele, and Leeds I have taught and/or lectured on all aspects of Old and Middle English Language and Literature as well as on modules in History of the Language, Literary Theory, Linguistics, and post-medieval literature at undergraduate levels, and have provided specialist medieval courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in addition to doctoral supervision and external examining.