Laura Kalas

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I am an Associate Professor in Medieval English Literature at Swansea University, where I teach modules on medieval literature and culture, gender studies, and transhistorical modules about literature, gender and the body.

My research is primarily about the religious women of the Middle Ages, the medicalization of spirituality, the physiology of spiritual rapture, the senses, emotions, medieval medicine, and the medical humanities. My first book, 'Margery Kempe's Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course' was published in 2020 and released in paperback in 2023. I have co-edited a critical companion to Margery Kempe, 'Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe', which is also out in paperback. My interests lie in the deep intersections between the religious and medical ideologies of the Middle Ages and the parallels that can be drawn between the medieval and modern in terms of approaches to health and wellbeing. I am especially interested in medieval female visionaries and the way in which their physiology is 'written', 'read', and adapted.

My next book-length project is about the 'holy medicine' of medieval female mystics in Europe. This research will explore the ways in which medieval religious women were able to modify their physiology and utilise their senses in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment and transformation.

I am co-founder of The Margery Kempe Society and have contributed to The Guardian, BBC History Magazine, and have been featured in BBC Radio Wales' programme 'The Idea'.

Experience

  • 2020–present
    Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature, Swansea University
  • 2017–2020
    Lecturer in Medieval English Literature, Swansea University
  • 2016–2017
    Postdoctoral researcher and tutor, University of Exeter

Education

  • 2016 
    University of Exeter, PhD English
  • 2000 
    University of Kent at Canterbury, MA Medieval and Tudor Studies

Publications

  • 2024
    Co-edited volume: Routledge, Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age, 1000-1500
  • 2023
    The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature, ‘Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, and Female Spirituality’
  • 2021
    Edited volume: Manchester University Press, Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe
  • 2019
    Monograph: Boydell and Brewer, Margery Medica: Pain, Surrogacy and Healing in 'The Book of Margery Kempe'
  • 2019
    Studies in the Ages of Chaucer, 40 , ‘The Swetenesse of Confection: A Recipe for Spiritual Health in London, British Library, Additional MS 61823, The Book of Margery Kempe’
  • 2016
    Medieval Feminist Forum, Vol. 52, No. 1, 'Slayn for Goddys lofe': Margery Kempe's Melancholia and the Bleeding of Tears

Professional Memberships

  • Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Honours

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Contact Laura for

  • General
  • Media request
  • Speaking request
  • Consulting / Advising
  • Research collaboration
  • Research supervision