About
Dr Laura Kalas specialises in medieval literature and medieval religious culture, especially women’s writing and its textual history. Her research is often interdisciplinary, bringing medieval medical and scientific discourse into dialogue with literary and historical representations. Central to her work is the convergence between the medieval and the modern, particularly in relation to questions of health and wellbeing, and gender and sexuality.
Public engagement and communication are important aspects of Laura’s work and she has several broadcast credits, including episodes of Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ (BBC Radio 4) on Julian of Norwich and Pope Joan. She has also discussed Julian of Norwich in ‘History’s Youngest Heroes’ (BBC Radio 4) and has contributed to BBC Radio Wales’ ‘The Idea’ on female beauty standards in the past and present, and BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Sunday Morning’ flagship programme. Laura also writes regularly for ‘The Conversation’, where she explores touchstones between the medieval past and the present. Her work on the medicinal recipe at the end of The Book of Margery Kempe manuscript has been featured in The Guardian and the BBC History Magazine.
Laura an Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is also the Co-Director of Swansea’s MHRC (Medical Humanities Research Centre) and a member of MEMO (the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research). She serves on the Steering Committee of the Gender and Medieval Studies (GMS) group and is also a Series Editor for the Brepols series ‘Gender and Sexuality in the Global Middle Ages’.
