Eleanor Baker

@EleanorMayBaker

Supervisor: Professor Daniel Wakelin

Research Interests:  Textual materiality, devotional texts, text-object relationships, material studies, public engagement & outreach.

Doctoral Research: My AHRC-funded doctoral thesis, 'References to Textual Materiality in Late Medieval English Devotional Literature', explores how metaphors of textual materiality were used in devotional literature. I analyse a range of Middle English texts, incuding book-craft recipes, The Charters of Christ, sermons, lyrics, and The Book of Margery Kempe, in order to better understand how material texts (books, legal documents, inscribed objects) were percieved. I contextualise these references within wider Christian material culture, and argue that references to the material text were not necessarily self-reflexive, but reflective of immaterial ideas and perceptions of material texts. 

Outside of my DPhil I enjoy creating events which broaden the public's perception of the medieval. I co-organised the Oxford Medieval Church Crawl and the Oxford Medieval Pilgrimage Day with Dr Rebecca Menmuir, and worked as the student administrator on the Oxford Medieval Mystery Cycle. I co-presented AHRC-TORCH funded podcast, 'Living Libraries' with History DPhil Alexander Peplow.

I have taught at the University of Oxford, and at Royal Holloway, University of London.