Dr Katherine Wilson

Undergraduate

• Rebellion and Society in the Late Middle Ages
• The Age of the Black Death
• Power, Ritual and the State: Court and Cities, 1363-1477
• Europe and the Wider World: Turning Points in History, 1000-2000
• Journeys in the Past
• History at Work
• The Mystery of History
• Constructing Histories
• History Dissertation

Postgraduate

• The Power of the Court
• Approaches to Historiography
• Research methods and skills in History

My principal research interests lie in seeking to understand the relationship between social, economic and cultural change in fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe through the examination of shifting patterns in the uses of material culture. My research and published work to date has focused on a powerful late medieval polity, the Burgundian Netherlands (1363-1477), examining the means by which objects contributed to the projection of social status for urban inhabitants and the cultural construction of political authority in the Burgundian territories. I have also examined and reconstructed the biographies of medieval producers and users of objects. My research is developed from my archival work on ducal accounts, ducal and urban inventories, wills and literary works.

Externally Funded Projects

Arts and Humanities Research Council Network Grant and Follow on Funding for Impact and Engagement: 'The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries, 1000-1700 (MOB)'

I am the Principal Investigator (with CI Dr Leah Clark, University of Oxford) of an AHRC network grant and follow on funding for Impact and Engagement. Mobility of Objects across Boundaries (MOB) is a research network which reconsiders the history of objects across Western Europe AD 1000-1700. It brings together art historians, historians, archaeologists, literary scholars, digital humanists and museum curators to examine selected objects from this period and understand the impact and consequences of mobility of objects to larger historical transformations 1000-1700. We are working with the Grosvenor Museum, Chester to examine understudied objects in their collections and to bring them to wider public attention as well as produce educational resources.

The Production, Commercialisation and Consumption of Luxury Textiles 1400-1600

I was the co-organiser (with Professor Bart Lambert, Vrije Universiteit Brussels) of a research network of scholars from America, Belgium, France, Italy and Austria, all of whom investigated the interdependency of the Low Countries, Italy, and their neighbouring territories in the production, commercialisation and consumption of luxury textiles 1400-1600. The network produced an edited volume with Ashgate/Routledge Press.

Areas of MRes and MPhil/PhD Supervision

• Medieval Courts
• Medieval Material Culture/Art
• Medieval Urban Centres
• Medieval Commerce, Trade and Merchants
• The Black Death Pandemic
• Heritage, Public History and Teaching of the Middle Ages

Books and monographs

Wilson, K.A and Clark, L., (eds), The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).

Wilson, K.A., The Power of Textiles. Tapestries of the Burgundian Dominions (1363-1477) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

Wilson, K.A and Lambert, B., (eds.), Europe’s Rich Fabric. The Consumption, Commercialisation and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) (Ashgate Early Modern Series, 2016).

Full papers in refereed journals

Katherine A. Wilson, 'Women Suppliers to Medieval Courts: Making Visible Ducal and Royal Power', Gender and History (2023), pp. 1-17.

Wilson, K.A., ‘Objects as Political and Dynastic Agents in Burgundian Ducal Inventories’, in Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenchafen/Austrian Journal of Historical Studies (2022), pp. 19-43.

Wilson, K.A., 'Commerce and Consumers: The Ubiquitous Chest of the Late Middle Ages', The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Winter 2021), 1-28.

K. A. Wilson, M. Bird, D. Egan-Simon, A. Jackson, L. Montgomery, R. Kirkup, 'Touching, feeling, smelling and sensing history through objects: New Opportunities from the 'Material Turn', Teaching History (December 2020), pp. 40-48.

Wilson, K.A., ‘The household inventory as urban 'theatre' in late medieval Burgundy’, Social History, 40: 3, August (2015), pp. 335-359. Open Access.

Social History Blog

Wilson, K.A., ‘Paris, Arras et la Cour : Les tapissiers de Philippe le Hardi et Jean sans Peur. 1363-1419’, Revue du Nord, 389 (2011), pp. 11-31.

Parts or chapters of books

Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., ‘Introduction: The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, ed. Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).

Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., ‘Thresholds and Boundaries’, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, ed. Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).

Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., ‘Framing and Translation’, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, ed. Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).

Wilson, K.A., ‘Textiles: 1400-1600’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation ed. Margaret King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

Wilson, K.A., ‘The Hidden Narratives of Medieval Art’ in Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul and Nina Rowe (eds.), Whose Middle Ages?:A Reader edited by (Fordham: Fordham University Press, 2019), pp. 23-33.

Wilson K.A, ‘Furnishing the Dukes with a Royal Reputation. The use of chambers and chapels at the Burgundian Court’, in S. Hoppe, S. Breitling, M. De Jonge (eds), The Interior as Embodiment of Power. The Image of the Prince and its Spatial Setting, 1400-1700 (Munich, 2018), pp. 57-78.

Wilson, K.A and Lambert, B., 'Luxury Textiles in Italy and the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries): A Conceptual Investigation', in K. A. Wilson and B. Lambert (eds.), Europe’s Rich Fabric. The Consumption, Commercialisation and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) (Ashgate Early Modern Series, 2016), pp. 1-10.

Wilson, K.A., ''In the chamber, in the garde robe, in the chapel, in a chest': The possession and uses of luxury textiles. The case of Later Medieval Dijon', in K. A. Wilson and B. Lambert (eds.), Europe’s Rich Fabric. The Consumption, Commercialisation and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) (Ashgate Early Modern Series, 2016), pp. 11-34.

Wilson, K.A., ‘Tapestry of the Burgundian Dominions. A complex object’ in T. Hiltman (ed.) La cour de Bourgogne et l’Europe: Le rayonnement et les limites d’un modèle culturel, (Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern, 2013), pp. 317-332.

Wilson, K.A., ‘Political tapestries of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless’, in E. J. Anderson and J. Farquhar (eds.) Visible Exports/Imports: New Research on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Culture, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge 2012), pp. 145-158.

Other significant contributions to journals, e.g. book reviews

Wilson, K.A., Review of Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States: the Unification of the Burgundian Netherlands 1380-1480, Reviews in History (2018). Online Open Access journal.

Wilson, K.A., Review of Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns by Samuel K. Cohn and Douglas Aiton, Social History 38: 4 (2013), pp. 510-542.

Wilson, K.A., Review of the exhibition, ‘Catherine’s world: devotion, demons and daily life in the 15th century’ held at Museum Het Valkhof,   Nijmegen, Renaissance Studies 24: 5 (2010), pp. 752-758.

• MA History (Glasgow)
• PGCE History (Aberdeen)
• M.Phil (Glasgow)
• PhD (Glasgow)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy