Dr Tania Colwell

BA, First Class Hons in History and French (Australian National University) and PhD (Australian National University)

I am a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe, specialising in the cultural and social history of France and England. I am interested in the ways cultural production, especially manuscript and early book culture, contributed to identity formation across the period. My interdisciplinary research explores a range of themes, including gender, patronage, politics, education, the marvellous and monstrous, crusades, emotions and intercultural encounter.

As well as researching and teaching in these areas, I have also been involved in public history in various forms, having worked on projects with the National Trust (UK), the National Museum of Australia, and the Department of the Senate.

• Cultural, social, and political history of late medieval Europe, esp. France and England
• Gender history of late medieval Europe
• Manuscript, early book, and literary culture
• History of emotions
• Early encounters; travel narratives and ethnographies
• Late medieval crusades

In development

Reading Mélusine: Romance Manuscripts and their Audiences in Late Medieval Europe, c. 1380–1530

This book examines the historical reception and cultural significance of the popular Mélusine romances, ancestral tales of the Lusignan family which centre on a fairy-dragon and her crusading sons, from the dual perspectives of the French romance manuscripts and their audiences. By investigating the patronage, presentation, transmission, and ownership of the surviving corpus of over thirty manuscripts produced between c. 1380 and c. 1530, Reading Mélusine explains how and why the texts retained their hold on later medieval imaginations, and explores how the cultural values embedded in the romances facilitated their circulation across France and beyond.

In development

With Gideon Brough (Open University, UK) and Sophie Patrick (UNE), editorial oversight of collaborative translation of Gilles le Bouvier, Chroniques de Charles VII.