Ayoush Lazikani

Ayoush Lazikani is a SEDA-accredited tutor, teaching and lecturing in Old English and Middle English. Her research considers a range of medieval literatures and cultures, and she has particular interests in religious literature. She has published widely in these areas.

Ayoush's third book, The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing (Yale University Press, 2025), considers how people understood and felt about the moon in a range of medieval cultures from around the world.

Her second book, Cry of the Turtledove: Emotion in Christian and Islamic Contemplative Texts, c. 1100-1250 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), is situated within the growing emphasis on 'globalization' in medieval studies, and it offers close comparative analyses of emotion in medieval Arabic and English contemplative texts.

Her first book, Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts (University of Wales Press, 2015), studies the languages of feeling—especially the interrelated affections of compassion, love, and sorrow—in texts and church wall paintings.

She has also published numerous essays in Medium Aevum, the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, the Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, Leeds Studies in English, and various edited collections.

https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-ayoush-lazikani#/