Author

Rachael C. Harkes (Department of History, Durham University, Durham)

Abstract

In 2011, when Jelle Haemers looked back on a decade's worth of Ph.D. theses on urban centres in the medieval Low Countries, he identified three main trends in scholarship: the emphasis on individuals, rather than institutions; the increasing use of new methodologies, such as social network analysis (SNA) and prosopography; and the deployment of inter-disciplinary perspectives. Haemers’intuition proved prescient; recent doctoral contributions to the historiography of medieval English towns and cities tend, generally, to fall along similar lines. In many ways, this is natural, and a testament to the enduring legacy and successes of earlier works. But, as the following discussion will elaborate, important and divergent steps have also been made, pushing our perceptions of pre-modern urban societies in new directions. Medieval urban history remains a vibrant area for study, with Ph.D. students forming an important section of its vanguard.

Access

Open access and free to download

Published on Urban History, Volume 49 , Issue 3 , August 2022