The Residency Scheme

The Human Remains Project has a limited number of residencies for individuals, from anywhere in the world, interested in working closely with the project team on specific case studies or small-scale research which would lead to real-world change in burial management, conservation, education, or public engagement etc.

New applications for residencies are currently closed for this phase of the project, but please find information on our current residents below: 

Project Residents

Alexandra Claridge is resident on the Human Remains Project, where she focuses on royal exhumations. Beyond the project, she is a postgraduate researcher and tutor at the University of Liverpool. Her doctoral work explores Lancastrian spectacle and drama. She has published on ‘The Winchester Dialogues’ and her chapter ‘Learning to Dance with Death in Late Medieval Drama’ will appear in the upcoming Mors Incipit: The Genesis and Dissemination of the Danse Macabre in Medieval Europe, to be published by Brill. She is a convenor of the North West Medieval Studies Network and a recipient of an International Courtly Literature Society Emerging Scholars Grant.

 

 

Karen Morell is the cathedrals materials resident on the project, dealing with textual accounts of cathedrals in relation to the historic dead. Karen first interacted with archaeology after joining the Caer Alyn Archaeology and Heritage project near Wrexham, North Wales as a volunteer in 2004. For about ten years, she ran the youth group and studied archaeology at the University of Chester, obtaining a BA, and a Masters in the Archaeology of Death and Memory. Karen is interested in researching the local history and archaeology of the area of where she lives and, especially, in the medieval chapels of ease.

Karen is still volunteering for Caer Alyn Archaeology as deputy director and is responsible for post-excavation processing.

 

Richard Bellis is a historian of medicine, specialising in the history of anatomy, disease, and science communication in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. He currently works as Associate Lecturer in Medical Ethics at the University of St Andrews Medical School. He has published on subjects such as the use of the senses in eighteenth-century anatomical investigations, and how genre was used to change the study of medical case histories. He is currently working on a monograph on Matthew Baillie and the development of morbid anatomy in Britain. He has also recently been the recipient of a Brotherton Library Fellowship (Leeds) and a Visiting Early-Career Research Fellowship at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library (Manchester) for his next project.

 

Llewelyn Hopwood worked as the Welsh materials assistant on the project, and was is in charge of finding and analysing relevant documents written in his mother tongue of Welsh. Llewelyn is in his final year of a DPhil in English at the University of Oxford, writing a thesis on the auditory landscape of medieval Wales and the impact of social change on auditory imagery in Welsh poetry 1300–1600. A secondary and related academic interest is in the creative uses of multilingualism in medieval society, involving decoding some curious texts in curious manuscripts. With a BA in modern languages (Spanish, Welsh and Irish) and an interdisciplinary MSt in medieval studies, along with some experience producing digital editions and editing the Oxford Research in  English journal, the Human Remains residency encouraged Llewelyn’s enthusiasm for translating, editing, and digital humanities.

 

Dr John Jenkins worked on the military mortuary ritual residency on the project, looking at the history of the Knights Hospitallers in Wales. John is Assistant Director of the Centre for Pilgrimage Studies and a Research Associate and Teaching Fellow at the University of York. His recent work has focused on the late medieval cult of Thomas Becket, and he played a prominent organizational and consultancy role in the recent 850th anniversary commemorations of Becket's death. He provided much of the research and text for the legacy website https://thebecketstory.org.uk. With Dee Dyas he has edited Pilgrimage and England's Cathedrals: Past, Present, and Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and has an edition and translation of the Customary of the Shrine of Thomas Becket due for publication with Arc Humanities Press in summer 2022.

 

Dr Brian Costello worked on the archaeology of the mortuary aspects of the Knights Hospitallers in Wales. Brian is a teaching fellow of archaeology at the University of Leicester. His work focuses on the analysis of medieval burials from both the early and later Middle Ages of Britain. Recent work includes the identification and investigation of curated material culture deposited within early Anglo-Saxon graves.  

 

Dr Olivia Colquitt worked on the translation of Middle English accounts of exhumation and reburial. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Liverpool: this examines the intersections between gender, embodiment, and visuality in the construction of matrilineal identity in the Middle English prose Melusine. Her wider research explores the shifting perspectives of female agency and ancestry in late medieval English romance, with a particular focus on the genealogical contribution of characters operating beyond normative hegemonies. Olivia has a forthcoming publication on the Melusine manuscript and has plans to co-author a new critical edition of the romance.