Medieval Grad Podcast

This episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast is tasty! Adam Morin, a PhD candidate in history at Queen's University, discusses with Lucie Laumonier the ins and out of Byzantine cuisine. What did a Byzantine grocery list look like? And what did people eat? That very much depended on the social status of individuals as well as on where they lived. In Constantinople, food choices were greater than in a small countryside village. Bon appétit! 

Have you ever heard of archeobotany? It’s the study of ancient plants! Alice Wolff, a PhD candidate in medieval studies at Cornell University tells Lucie Laumonier about her research, which takes her from the fields to the lab. Alice Wolff studies ancient grain and chards to find out about agricultural practices and the impact of climate change on agriculture in early medieval England.

You can support this podcast and Medievalists.net on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

What did Baltic crusaders feel when fighting on the battlefield? Or, more precisely, what were they supposed to feel, according to chroniclers? In this episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast, Lucie talks with Patrick Eickman, a PhD student in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Patrick studies the Baltic crusades through the fascinating lens of the history of emotions. 

You can support this podcast and Medievalists.net on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

What do you really know about Chinggis Khan? In this episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast, Lucie Laumonier interviews Dotno Pount about the Mongol leader Chinggis Khan and what historians know about his life and afterlife. Dotno's research focuses on how after Chinggis’ death he was worshipped as a divine royal ancestor within Mongol society.

You can support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

How urban and marine archaeology allows us to dive into international commerce. In this episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast, Lucie Laumonier interviews Jeroen Oosterbaan, who is doing a PhD in Archaeology at the University of Leiden. Jeroen studies casks and barrels found in shipwrecks and in urban settings to investigate the networks of trade in the premodern Low Countries. More specifically, Jeroen looks at the residues inside of the barrels to identify their content and at the barrels themselves to know where they came from. Our guest walks us through the science behind his research and tells us about his preliminary findings. Who would have known that old casks had so many secrets?!

We are bridging communities across the sea in this episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast. Emma Snowden talks with Lucie Laumonier about her dissertation, “Bridging the Strait: The Shared History of Iberia and North Africa in Medieval Muslim and Christian Chronicles.” She looks at the Strait of Gibraltar as a point of connection between Iberians and North Africans as well as between Christians and Muslims. Her work is based on fascinating chronicles written in North Africa, Al-Andalus and Christian Iberia, and how these chroniclers wrote their shared history.

Did you know that Loki was a gender-bending God? In this episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast, Lucie Laumonier interviews Matthew Roby, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. Matthew’s research looks at sex and gender in Old Norse and Icelandic sagas. There were many gender-bending characters in these texts, informing us of the gender representations and roles of Norse societies. The topic was so dense that we’re making a two-part series about this – first, gender, and in the next episode, sex! 

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists 

The road from medieval manuscripts to medieval memes! The Medieval Grad Podcast looks at digitized manuscripts with Suzette Van Haaren, who recently defended her dissertation in Art History at the University of Groningen and at the University of Saint-Andrews. Suzette studies the ins and outs of digitized manuscripts and tells all their secrets to our host, Lucie Laumonier. So, how do we get to a world where the Internet is a treasure trove of medieval manuscripts - and of medieval memes?!

What did it mean to abduct your fiancé? Lucie Laumonier talks with Chanelle Delameillieure about marriage and consent in the late medieval Low Countries. Chanelle is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University in the United States. We learn that consented abductions were a thing, but that they could lead to contentious outcomes! 

From chess and backgammon to politics, courtly culture and race relations.  Lucie Laumonier interviews Alexandra Montero Peters about her research into the wonderfully illuminated thirteenth-century manuscript known as the Book of Games. A great episode to know everything about chess, Iberian court culture and politics all at once! 

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists 

In the Middle Ages, making it to Sainthood was a tedious process. Though, being murdered in the Canterbury Cathedral was a good starting point. Lucie Laumonier interviews Tristan Taylor on his research into the so-called South English Legendaries, a collection of saints’ lives drafted from the thirteenth century.

You can support this podcast and Medievalists.net on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

From Woven Sails to Slavery: Viking lovers, this episode is for you! Lucie Laumonier meets Sarah Christensen, a PhD student at Brown University who studies the slave trade in the Western Viking world and its intersections with gender. We learn that enslaved women often worked in textile production, weaving the sails Viking men used to propel their ships.

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

The Cathars are one of the most well-known heresies in medieval Europe. But how much do we know about them? In this episode, Lucie Laumonier interviews Jean-Paul Rehr about the mythical Cathars and a peculiar inquisition record drafted near Toulouse in the thirteenth century. 

Ancient DNA has a lot to say about the people who walked the Earth in the Middle Ages… History and sciences are coming together and it’s quite the crossover. In this episode of Medieval Grad Podcast, Lucie Laumonier interviews Reed Johnston Morgan, a history PhD candidate at Harvard University, who studies frontier communities in the Western Mediterranean at the turn of the Antique world and the early Middle Ages. Among Reed’s sources is ancient DNA belonging to people who walked the Earth 1,500 years ago.

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

Do you know what is the best weapon to attack your drinking pal outside of a tavern? A rotting cat, of course! In today’s episode, Allison Bailey, a PhD candidate in history at the University of Toronto presents her research about the intersection of gender, violence and emotions in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France.

What made medieval people laugh? To find out, Lucie Laumonier talks with Bryant White, a PhD student in French studies at Vanderbilt University. Bryant’s research focuses on medieval satire and parody where he analyses representations of the clergy.

You can follow Lucie on Instagram at The French Medievalist

You can support this podcast through Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

Have you ever wondered what life was like for Mamluk farmers? In this episode, Lucie Laumonier talks with Omar Abdel-Ghaffar, a PhD candidate at Harvard University about Nile floods, landscapes and village communities in late medieval Egypt.

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

We travel to medieval Florence with the famous writer Dante Alighieri. Elisabeth Trischler, a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, talks with Lucie Laumonier about the city of Florence and how it inspired Dante’s Divine Comedy.

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

Today’s guest on the Medieval Grad Podcast is Soojung Han, a PhD candidate in East Asian studies at Princeton University. Soojung Han talks with Lucie Laumonier about the Shatuo Turks who rose to power in the ninth century, after the fall of the Tang dynasty.

Lucie Laumonier talks to Adelheid Russenberger, a PhD candidate in history at Queen Mary University of London, England, about medieval disabilities and what it meant, in the Middle Ages, to be disabled.

Today, we tend to associate race with skin colour. But, what did “Race” mean in the Medieval era? That’s what we’re finding with today’s guest, Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan. Drew Narayanan is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He talks to Lucie Laumonier about race in the Middle Ages and the figure of the “Saracens” in French manuscripts.

Digging up animal bones can teach us a lot about the Middle Ages - in fact, zooarcheologists are able to make them speak! Today’s guest is Erin Crowley-Champoux, a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. She talks with Lucie Laumonier about zooarchaeology and how animal remains of the past can speak to social changes.

You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists 

Moneylending was serious business in the Middle Ages. You could be risking your very soul! Lucie Laumonier talks with Sama Mammadova, a PhD candidate at Harvard University, who studies the history of usury and moneylending in fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy. How did medieval moneylenders reconcile their business with the fear of sin?

Learn more about this podcast on Medievalists.net

Welcome to the Medieval Grad Podcast - where we talk about the future of medieval studies. This is our teaser episode - just a quick talk with the creator and host, Lucie Laumonier, to explain what the podcast is about and what you will be able to listen to in future episodes.