Dr Emily A. Winkler
Lecturer in Medieval History
Dr Winkler’s research interests are in Anglo-Norman history and historical writing, political ideas, storytelling, emotion and medicine. She is also interested in literature and visual culture in the medieval Norman world.
About
A cultural and social historian of medieval Europe, Dr Emily A. Winkler works on a range of historical questions about medieval storytelling, thinking and ideas, discovering new ways to understand histories, poetry and art (10th to 13th centuries).
With expertise in the British Isles and the wider Norman world, her geographic areas of interest range from England and Wales to Norman southern Italy and Sicily. In recent work she has explored madness and the mind; chronic grief in 12th-century thought; compassion for mercenaries; and the long legacy of ancient Rome in medieval Europe. In working on the history of ideas about warfare and the experience of war, she has written extensively about how medieval people imagined leadership, invasion, conquest and colonization.
Most recently, Dr Winkler wrote a study exploring how medieval writers challenged stereotypes about men who fought for pay. Currently, she is writing a study on the legacy of ancient Rome in medieval Europe, with a focus on Wales and England. Her latest book is Pocket Bayeux Tapestry for Bodleian Library Publishing (September 2026), published to coincide with the major loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum later this year.
Expertise
- Bayeux Tapestry
- Medieval chronicles, historical writing and visual culture
- England and Normandy, 900-1300
- Medieval narratives of war, diplomacy and peace
- History of emotion – grief, loss, compassion and chronic feeling
- History of medicine and psychology – madness and healing
- Latin
- Medieval cultural and political history
- Norman Conquest
- Medieval history
- Medieval England
- Kings and queens
- Chronicles and histories
- History of madness
- History of emotion
- Medieval Europe
Selected publications
- Pocket Bayeux Tapestry (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2026)
- ‘England’s enemies? Framing feelings about foreigners and mercenaries in high medieval war narratives’, Parergon 42 (2025)
- ‘Grief, Grieving, and Loss in High Medieval Historical Thought’ Traditio 77 (2022)
- ‘Æthelflaed and other rulers in English histories, c. 900-1150’, The English Historical Review 137 (2022)
- Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, c. 900-1300 (Brepols, 2022, co-edited with C.P. Lewis)
- The Normans in the Mediterranean (Brepols, 2021, co-edited with L. Fitzgerald)
- Designing Norman Sicily: Material Culture and Society (Boydell & Brewer, 2020, co-edited with L. Fitzgerald & A. Small)
- Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing (Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Discovering William of Malmesbury (Boydell & Brewer, 2017, co-edited with R.M. Thomson & E. Dolmans)
Media experience
Dr Emily A. Winkler has worked with the media in television and periodicals. She advised and appears in the documentary Heirdom: The Legacy of England’s Normans (October 2026), co-produced by Mil Sabords and French public television. She has written about the Bayeux Tapestry for the Times Literary Supplement and is currently writing an article about medieval perceptions of mercenaries for History Today.
Languages
English (native speaker); Latin (reading knowledge); French (basic conversational); German (basic conversational)