Academic Research & Teaching
Photo: Megan Taylor
My research is centred on late medieval mathematical sciences. My particular areas of interest are the relationship between astronomical theory and practice, techniques of calculation and instrument-making, the relationship between religion and science (especially in monasteries), and the depiction of sciences in Latin and vernacular literature.
My AHRC-funded PhD, awarded in 2016, was supervised by Prof. Liba Taub (pictured in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, with object Wh.3271: "King Arthur's Table"). This formed the nucleus of my first book, The Light Ages. Although that was written primarily for a general audience, it has been favourably reviewed in academic journals such as Isis and The Medieval Review.
I have been an AHRC-funded curatorial intern at the Whipple Museum, and have held Research Fellowships at Girton College, Cambridge (2016-19), and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2020).
I have lectured, supervised and examined undergraduates and masters students in the Cambridge Faculty of History and Department of History and Philosophy of Science. I have also taught on the International Summer Programme and Lifelong Learning programme of the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. I am a qualified secondary school teacher, and have taught GCSEs, A levels and the International Baccalaureate at schools in the UK and Canada.
Selected publications
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"Understanding the Length of Life: the Glosses on Plato of Tivoli’s Translation of the Quadripartitum", SCIAMVS 22 (2022): 195-251. Available to download here.
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"Copying and Computing Tables in Late Medieval Monasteries", in Editing and Analysing Numerical Tables: Towards a Digital Information System for the History of Astral Sciences, ed. Matthieu Husson, Clemency Montelle and Benno van Dalen (Brepols, 2021): 79–105. Available fully open-access.
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"'El Capri Kylex': A Franciscan astronomical mnemonic", Journal for the History of Astronomy 52 (2021): 267–288. Available fully open-access.
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"Vernacular Craft and Science in the Equatorie of the Planetis", Medium Ævum 88 (2019): 329-60. Available to download from JSTOR.
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"Natural Sciences", in Historians on John Gower: Society, Religion and Politics, ed. Stephen H. Rigby (Boydell & Brewer, 2019), 491-525.
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"Sacred astronomy? Beyond the stars on a Whipple astrolabe", in The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and Interpretations, ed. Liba Taub, Joshua Nall and Frances Willmoth (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 11-32. Available fully open-access.
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"'I found this written in the other book': Learning Astronomy in Late Medieval Monasteries", Studies in Church History 55 (2019): 129-44. Download open-access (not fully formatted) version here.
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"A Merton College Equatorium: Text, Translation, Commentary", SCIAMVS 17 (2016): 121-159. Available to download here.
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"Learning Medieval Astronomy through Tables: The Case of the Equatorie of the Planetis", Centaurus 58 (2016): 6-25. Download open-access (not fully formatted) version here.
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"The scholar as craftsman: Derek de Solla Price and the reconstruction of a medieval instrument", Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 68 (2014): 111‑134. Available fully open-access.