Ingredients: 30% cultural historian, 30% literary historian, 15% ecclesiastical historian,15% art historian, 10% psychologist. Also contains lanolin.
I was educated in Moscow, Oxford, and Cambridge in History, Theology, and English. I have worked at Cambridge and King’s College London as a medievalist historian, taught English at Queen Mary University of London, Reading, Oxford, and Winchester, and held postdocs in art history in London and Paris. In 2011-2014 I was a British Academy postdoctoral fellow with the Department of English at King’s College London. I also have a graduate diploma in psychology and I am not afraid to use it. At Oxford, I teach and research a range of cross-disciplinary topics to do with History, English, Theology, and Art History, as well as Study Skills tutorials.
My Role in the College
As a college lecturer in Medieval History, I have responsibility for teaching a wide range of papers, mostly covering the early, high, and late medieval periods at Prelims level and in the Final Honour School.
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Selected Publications
Books
- Attachment and God in Medieval England: Focusing on the Figure (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021)
- A Maid with a Dragon: The Cult St Margaret of Antioch in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, British Academy Postdoctoral Monographs Series, 2016)
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Moscow: University of Dmitry Pozharski, 2010)
- Ed., Thanks for Typing: Remembering Forgotten Women in History (Bloomsbury, 2021)
- Ed. with V. Blud, Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies: An Introduction (University of Wales Press, 2020),
- Ed. with I. Afanasyev and E. Kooper, The Medieval Chronicle X, eds Ilya Afanasyev (Brill, 2016)
- Ed. with N. Sparks, Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles (Cambridge Scholars, 2012),
- Ed. with B. Sparks, The Medieval Chronicle VII (Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, 2011)
Articles and Research Papers
- 'Creating a Margery-sized space: Margery Kempe’s narrative defences and offences', in Groniek – Cognitive Turn Special Issue (2023), 38-47.
- 'Oxford misericords and their patrons, medieval and modern: a brief history', in Choir Stalls and Their Patrons, eds. Barbara Spanjol-Pandelo
- 'Medieval Memes, Misericords, and Margery Kempe', Vox Medii Aevi, 2021:2, 117-146, open access: http://voxmediiaevi.com/2021-2-dresvina/ DOI: 10.24412/2587-6619-2021-2-117-146
- 'I am not having what she’s having: Female sexual (un)pleasure medieval and modern' in Painful Pleasures: Sado-Masochism in Medieval Culture, ed. Chris Vaccaro (MUP, 2022): 209-234
- 'Canvasses in the Attic: Three Generations of Lane Poole Women', in Thanks for Typing (Bloomsbury, 2021): 162-173
- 'Attachment Theory for Historians of Medieval Religion', in Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies (University of Wales Press, 2020): 121-141
- 'Darwin’s Cathedral, Bowlby’s Cloister', Irish Theological Quarterly (2020): 1-18
- 'What Julian Saw: The Embodied Showings and the Items for Private Devotion', Special issue of Religions: Domestic Devotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Salvador Ryan (2019) 10(4):245 DOI 10.3390/rel10040245
- 'A Shroddinger’s Saint: An Icon of St Spyridon’s Shrine is St John’s College, Oxford', TWM 2018, 53-57
- ‘Thys ys the boke of dame anne': BL MS Harley 4012 and the context of its production’, Les femmes, la culture et les arts en Europe entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance/ Women, Art and Culture in Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe, eds Cynthia Brown and Anne-Marie Legare (Brepols, 2016), 135-150
- 'Unorthodox Itinerary of an Orthodox Bishop: Abraham of Suzdal and His Journey to Western Europe 1437-1441', The Mediaeval Journal, 2014:1, 91-124
- 'Hagiography and Idealism: St Dimpna of Geel, the Uncanny Saint', Anchoritism in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, eds Naoe Kukita and Catherine Innes-Parker (University of Wales Press, 2013), 83-99
- 'The Shadow of Dido: An Interpretation of the Trojan Episodes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', in Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles (2012), 259-289
- 'The significance of the demonic episode in the legend of St Margaret of Antioch' Medium Aevum, 2012:2, 189-209