I am an active researcher of medieval English literature, manuscripts, and language, in the Department of English, Languages, and cultures at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I’m lucky to have my own research projects that are suitable for an independent researcher and to collaborate on others that lend themselves to various investigators. Currently, my research activities stretch across four research projects that are independent, yet connected, via the concept of emergence.

The Material Medieval Memory Project

The Material Medieval Memory Project (MMMP) is where the bulk of my research energies

currently emerge. The MMMP investigates how materiality acts as a form that helps us locate that which is not locatable, such as liminal or marginalized identities,

or that which exists in indeterminate spaces, such as memory and memories. The MMMP works to make digital humanities accessible to the public, and it encourages research about medieval cultures because doing so furthers our collective understanding of not only medieval culture, but Canadian and global cultures and identities. We need methods of engaging with the medieval in meaningful ways that actualize clearly facilitated connections with local communities and that yield sustained collaboration and broad scholarly exchange.

The Cotton Nero A.x. Project

The Cotton Nero A.x. Project is a collaboration between an international team of scholars with the collaboration of the British Library. We are using digital technology to improve the accessibility of British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x (art. 3) (in high-quality digital images and in extremely detailed transcription) and to create critical editions of the four poems it contains.

Cotton Nero A.x (art. 3) is the only known manuscript containing the famous 14^th century poems Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The goals of the project are first of all to make available high-quality digital photographs of the entire manuscript; second to transcribe the entire manuscript at the highest possible level of accuracy and detail; and finally to produce editions of each of the individual poems in which the digital facsimiles and the new transcriptions serve as a basis for a standard critical and reading text with glossary, full textual and explanatory notes, and other supports for readers.

My main roles as the critical editor of the Middle English Cleanness and the co-author of the project’s transcription policy mean that I have participated in new readings and discoveries of the poem and its manuscript.

Material Girls

Material girls: Middle English secular female scribes and their cultural agents aims to answer these questions: did women living in England during the Middle English period copy books?; and how did women living in England during the Middle English period signal their participation in literary and book producing culture of their time? The question of women’s participation in the Middle English literary culture remains one of the most mysterious and haunting for present day medieval literary scholars.

This project addresses the difficulty of scribal analysis and issues of evidence and unawareness regarding records of female literary participation. This research aims to better determine the actuality of women’s lives in medieval England, suggesting that women participated in the Middle English literary culture.

I am the principal researcher of this project, though I have employed a number of Research Assistants via the project.

Emergence as Method and Theme for SoTL Research

In 2017, I participated in Emergence as Method and Theme for SoTL Research with Dr. Ada Jaarsma (Philosophy, MRU). This project (via a TransCanada SoTL Mentorship grant from MRU’s Institute for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) examines “emergence” as an under-utilized yet valuable concept for SoTL, one that is useful as both theme for SoTL research and methodological commitment for scholarly teaching practices.