Dr Laura Slater
- Associate Professor in the History of Medieval Art and Architecture
- Fellow of Peterhouse
- Director of Studies in History of Art, Peterhouse
Contact
About
Laura Slater completed her AHRC-funded PhD in History of Art at King’s College, University of Cambridge. She has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin on the FP7-funded ‘History Books in the Anglo-Norman World’ project; a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of York on the ERC-funded ‘Visual Translations of Jerusalem in Europe’ project; an Affiliated Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Cambridge and a Teaching Fellow in History of Art at UCL. In 2015-2016, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. Before returning to Cambridge, she was a Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, whilst working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC-funded ‘Music and Late Medieval European Court Cultures’ project.
Research
Laura's strongly interdisciplinary research interests centre on the relationships between art, ideas, power and politics in medieval Britain and Europe. Her book investigated the imagined nature of power and political society in medieval England, offering a new assessment of the role of images in medieval political thought and a new interpretation of English political culture. Laura has a continuing interest in female cultural patronage in the Middle Ages. She is currently working on a study of Queen Philippa of Hainault, looking particularly at the illuminated manuscripts associated with her and their unusual musical content.
A second research focus is on the artistic and cultural consequences of medieval violence, especially in relation to conquest and crusade. She has written on monumental recreations of Jerusalem in Europe and their political as well as commemorative and devotional significances. Laura is particularly interested in medieval responses to antiquity in relation to the Holy Land. Her future research projects include a study of medieval Egyptology and a cultural history of the Anglo-Scottish Wars.