Professor Emilia Jamroziak

Profile

I graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and Central European University in Budapest and received my PhD from the University of Leeds in 2001. Since then I held a lectureship in medieval history at the University of Southampton, a post of Research Officer at the Centre for Metropolitan History, University of London and I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of History and Classics, University of Edinburgh. I joined the University of Leeds in September 2005 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2008 and to Professor in 2014. The recording of my inaugural lecture can be found here.

In 2024-25 I am the recepient of the Katedra Imienna im. Profesor Marii Janion at the University of Gdansk, Poland.

In 2019-2021 I was MWK COFUND Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien, Universitât Erfurt funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665958. In February-March 2019 I hold the Invitational Fellowships for Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science as a guest of Dr Toshio Ohnuki at Okayama University. In 2015-16 I held Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the Technische Universität Dresden, in spring 2009 I was a fellow at the Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte then at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. In summer 2005 I held a fellowship at the Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas in Leipzig. 

I am a member of the Medieval Central Europe Research Network (MECERN) and the chair of the Janos Bak Research Fellowship programme.

Between 2016 and 2019 I was the director of the Institute for Medieval Studies. 

Research interests

My research focuses on the culture of medieval monasticism, memory, identity and interactions between religious institutions, especially Cistercian monasteries and the laity from the early twelfth to the early sixteenth century. Geographically my work spans Britain (particularly the North and Scotland), Central Europe, East-Central Europe and the Baltic. My 2005 monograph on Cistercian Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire examined the workings of local social networks and the processes of their survival and change. My second monograph Survival and Success on Medieval Borders (2011) examined strategies of Cistercian communities on the frontiers of northern Europe. I have co-edited four volumes on various aspects of medieval monasticism and its social and cultural presence.

I have completed a new synthesis of the medieval history of the Cistercian order (Routledge 2013) and contributed to the Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order (ed. Mette B. Bruun). I am also an invited contributor to The Cambridge History of Monasticism in the Latin West and forthcoming New Cambridge History of Britain.

My research has been supported by the AHRC grants (2019-23, 2012-13, 2011-2014, 2007-2008) as well as Humboldt Stiftung (2015-16) and Horizon 2020 (2019-20).

• The Sacred Landscapes of Medieval Monasteries: An inter-disciplinary study of meaning embedded in space and production

Qualifications

• PhD (University of Leeds)
• MA (University of Leeds)
• MA (Central European University, Budapest)
• MA (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan)

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London

Student education

On the undegraduate level (BA), I teach modules on medieval religious culture, popular belief, and medieval Jewish history. I also contribute to the level 1 teaching on medieval Europe. On the postgraduate level (MA), I co-teach an module on late medieval individual and communal religious experience and supervise MA dissertations. 

Research Supervision

I would particularly welcome doctoral projects in the following areas:

• society and religion in high and late middle ages in Northern, Central and East-Central Europe

• Cistercian order

• monastic and mendicant culture

• historiograhy

• material culture of medieval monasticism (as a co-supervision with Dr Hugh Willmott, University of Sheffield)

Completed PhD thesis:

• Dr Steve Werronen (2013): 'Ripon Minster in its social context: 1350-1530'.

• Dr Mike Spence (2014): 'Record-keeping at Fountains Abbey and the management of Malham in Craven'. 

• Dr Audrey Thorstad (2015): 'Living in an Early Tudor Castle: Household, Display, and Space 1485-1542'.

• Dr Kirsty Day (2016) 'Constructing Dynastic Franciscan Identities in Bohemia and Polish Duchies'.

• Dr Richard Thomason (2016): 'Hospitality in a Cistercian abbey: The case of Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds in the later middle ages'.

• Dr Clarck Drieshen (2017) 'The dissemination and reception of visionary devotional instruction of continental origin in late medieval England'.

• Dr Francesca Breeden (2018): 'Communal Solitude: the Archaeology of the Carthusian Houses of the Provincia Angliae, 1178-1569' [Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield].

• Dr Victoria Yuskaitis (2020), 'Anchorites in Shropshire: An archaeological and literary analysis of the anchoritic vocation'.

• Kaan Gorman, (2022, MPhil) 'The Wilderness and the World: Encounters between the Carthusians of Late Medieval England and the Secular World'.

• Dr Pawel Cholewicki (2003)  'The Rise of the Observance and the disintegration of the Bosnian vicariate (1432-1469)'.

• Dr Andrea Mancini (2003) 'The Role of Niccolò da Osimo in the Franciscan Observant Reform (1370-1453)’.

• Dr Iain Dyson (2004) ‘Yorkshire and the Crusades 1095-1400)’.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Jewish Studies
• Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums

Current postgraduate researchers

• Iain Dyson
• Chris Latham
• Ash Paley