Alison More

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and History of Christianity 2014–15
WSRP Research Associate 2014–15
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Home institution

University of Edinburgh

Profile

Alison More joins the Women's Studies in Religion program from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at the University of Bristol under the direction of Carolyn Muessig. She later held a research position for the project "Religious Orders and Religious Identities," based at Radboud University in Nijmegen, and was assistant professor at the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University.

More's scholarly work investigates the social and religious culture of Northern Europe from 1250 to 1450. She is particularly interested in the evolution of female quasi-religious groups (including beguines and tertiaries). Her work also explores medieval lay piety, preaching, literacy, gender roles, changing images of sanctity, and cultural links between the Low Countries and Scotland. She co-edited the volume Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities, authored several articles and chapters, and has a forthcoming monologue entitled "Preacher, Text and Religious Identity: 1289-1560." In Scotland and the Low Countries, More has used a diverse range of media to foster interest in local social and cultural history.

Research project

Education, Confessionalisation, and Identity in Women’s Religious Communities, 1370-1563

This project explores the changing identities and intellectual engagement of communities of non-monastic religious women in the Low Countries. It questions the established traditions that emphasize feminine passivity, illiteracy, and lack of theological engagement, and explores the roles that women played in creating a coherent confessional identity.

WSRP lecture

Fictive Histories and Penitential Disorder: "Irregular" Women in Medieval Christianity

Course

HDS 2114: Gender, Religion, Writing and Identity in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe (fall 2014)