Sociological approaches and the urban history of medieval England: research trends and new perspectives (2017–2022)

Harkes, Rachael C.

Abstract

In 2011, when Jelle Haemers looked back on a decade's worth of Ph.D. theses on urban centres in the medieval Low Countries, he identified three main trends in scholarship: the emphasis on individuals, rather than institutions; the increasing use of new methodologies, such as social network analysis (SNA) and prosopography; and the deployment of inter-disciplinary perspectives. Haemers’ intuition proved prescient; recent doctoral contributions to the historiography of medieval English towns and cities tend, generally, to fall along similar lines. In many ways, this is natural, and a testament to the enduring legacy and successes of earlier works. But, as the following discussion will elaborate, important and divergent steps have also been made, pushing our perceptions of pre-modern urban societies in new directions. Medieval urban history remains a vibrant area for study, with Ph.D. students forming an important section of its vanguard.

Citation

Harkes, R. C. (2022). Sociological approaches and the urban history of medieval England: research trends and new perspectives (2017–2022). Urban History, 49(3), 648-656. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926822000293

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jul 5, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-08
• Deposit Date: Aug 18, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 18, 2022
• Journal: Urban History
• Print ISSN: 0963-9268
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-8706
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 648-656
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926822000293
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1196885