Research Interests

I am currently working on several different projects. One is an article tracing the origins of scolding indictments in the local courts of late fourteenth-century England, a project that focuses on the criminalization of women's speech and gossip. Also in preparation are two articles employing demographic evidence, particularly from the English poll taxes: one compares households in town and country through demographic and paleodemographic data, and a second offers a demographic perspective on medieval coastal communities. Most of my time, however, is focused on maritime history, including a monograph that takes an ethnographic approach to exploring how residents of coastal communities in medieval England adapted to their marine environment, both on board ship and ashore. A related project is an edition of primary sources for the London Record Society that translates shipping and other types of accounts containing details on maritime life and industry along the Thames in the middle ages.

In press is a co-edited volume on Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing, and Household, to be published by Cambridge University Press. I am also author of Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (CUP, 1995); editor of Medieval Towns: A Reader (Broadview Press, 2006); The Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter, 1266-1321 (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 1993); and The Havener’s Accounts of the Earldom and Duchy of Cornwall, 1287-1356 (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 2001); and co-editor of Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1988) and Gendering the Master Narrative (Cornell University Press, 2003). I have also published articles on women and work, the urban family, port towns, and overseas and inland trade in medieval England. Among my most recent articles are “’Alien’ Encounters in the Maritime World of Medieval England,” Medieval Encounters 13 (2007); "The Consumer Economy,” in A Social History of England, 1200-1500, ed. R. Horrox and W. M. Ormrod (CUP 2006); “Working at Sea: Maritime Recruitment and Remuneration in Medieval England,” in Ricchezza del mare, ricchezza dal mare. Secoli XIII-XVIII, ed.S. Cavciocchi (Prato, 2006); and "The Commercialization of the Marine Fisheries of England and Wales,” International Journal of Maritime History (2004). I also serve on the editorial board of Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America.

Web Sites

Editor of Online Medieval Sources Bibliography, an annotated database of online and printed sources for the study of the middle ages.

Publisher of the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, a compilation of thousands of translated primary sources for the history of the middle ages.

Editor of The French of England Website, which facilitates access to material centering on the French documents of England, including bibliography, syllabi, translations, and lists of scholars in the field.