Dr Katherine Wilson
Associate Professor of Later Medieval European History
Katherine Wilson is Associate Professor of Later Medieval European History at the University of Chester. As a historian of the European Later Middle Ages her research and teaching focuses on the shifting patterns of material culture and its commercial, cultural and political contexts. Katherine is an active research scholar, securing external academic funding and has written and published widely. Her research and teaching has a strong public impact and engagement focus. Katherine leads on 'Chester Festival of Ideas' a programme of free, inclusive and accessible public events on a wide range of themes in and around Chester, co-created by the University of Chester and external stakeholders and city partners to help shape, implement and deliver the University's Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategy.
Katherine teaches a range of modules on Medieval European History at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She co-designed and delivers History at Work: Pathways to your future, a second year module where students undertake projects with external Heritage partners and teaching immersions in primary and secondary schools. She supervises and examines a wide range of postgraduate research and taught degrees as senior supervisor and supervisor.
Katherine's principal research interests lie in seeking to understand the relationship between social, economic and cultural change in fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe through the examination of shifting patterns in the uses of material culture. Her research and published work to date has focused on a powerful late medieval polity, the Burgundian Netherlands (1363-1477), examining the means by which objects contributed to the projection of social status for urban inhabitants and the cultural construction of political authority in the Burgundian territories. Her work has also examined and reconstructed the biographies of medieval producers and users of objects. Her research is developed from archival work on ducal accounts, ducal and urban inventories, wills and literary works. Katherine's externally funded impact and engagement projects have produced public exhibitions, object boxes for loan to schools, digital and virtual reality reconstructions of medieval city sites and extensive teaching resources for Key Stages 1-3 and GSCE.
Books and monographs
Wilson, K.A and Clark, L., (eds), The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).
Wilson, K.A., The Power of Textiles. Tapestries of the Burgundian Dominions (1363-1477) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).
Wilson, K.A and Lambert, B., (eds.), Europe’s Rich Fabric. The Consumption, Commercialisation and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) (Ashgate Early Modern Series, 2016).
Full papers in refereed journals
Katherine A. Wilson, 'Women Suppliers to Medieval Courts: Making Visible Ducal and Royal Power', Gender and History (2023), pp. 1-17.
Wilson, K.A., ‘Objects as Political and Dynastic Agents in Burgundian Ducal Inventories’, in Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenchafen/Austrian Journal of Historical Studies (2022), pp. 19-43.
Wilson, K.A., 'Commerce and Consumers: The Ubiquitous Chest of the Late Middle Ages', The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Winter 2021), 1-28.
K. A. Wilson, M. Bird, D. Egan-Simon, A. Jackson, L. Montgomery, R. Kirkup, 'Touching, feeling, smelling and sensing history through objects: New Opportunities from the 'Material Turn', Teaching History (December 2020), pp. 40-48.
Wilson, K.A., ‘The household inventory as urban 'theatre' in late medieval Burgundy’, Social History, 40: 3, August (2015), pp. 335-359. Open Access.
Wilson, K.A., ‘Paris, Arras et la Cour : Les tapissiers de Philippe le Hardi et Jean sans Peur. 1363-1419’, Revue du Nord, 389 (2011), pp. 11-31.
Parts or chapters of books
Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., ‘Introduction: The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, ed. Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).
Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., ‘Thresholds and Boundaries’, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, ed. Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).
Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., ‘Framing and Translation’, The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700’, ed. Wilson, K.A and Clark L.R., (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022).
Wilson, K.A., ‘Textiles: 1400-1600’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation ed. Margaret King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Wilson, K.A., ‘The Hidden Narratives of Medieval Art’ in Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul and Nina Rowe (eds.), Whose Middle Ages?:A Reader edited by (Fordham: Fordham University Press, 2019), pp. 23-33.
Wilson K.A, ‘Furnishing the Dukes with a Royal Reputation. The use of chambers and chapels at the Burgundian Court’, in S. Hoppe, S. Breitling, M. De Jonge (eds), The Interior as Embodiment of Power. The Image of the Prince and its Spatial Setting, 1400-1700 (Munich, 2018), pp. 57-78.
Wilson, K.A and Lambert, B., 'Luxury Textiles in Italy and the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries): A Conceptual Investigation', in K. A. Wilson and B. Lambert (eds.), Europe’s Rich Fabric. The Consumption, Commercialisation and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) (Ashgate Early Modern Series, 2016), pp. 1-10.
Wilson, K.A., ''In the chamber, in the garde robe, in the chapel, in a chest': The possession and uses of luxury textiles. The case of Later Medieval Dijon', in K. A. Wilson and B. Lambert (eds.), Europe’s Rich Fabric. The Consumption, Commercialisation and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) (Ashgate Early Modern Series, 2016), pp. 11-34.
Wilson, K.A., ‘Tapestry of the Burgundian Dominions. A complex object’ in T. Hiltman (ed.) La cour de Bourgogne et l’Europe: Le rayonnement et les limites d’un modèle culturel, (Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern, 2013), pp. 317-332.
Wilson, K.A., ‘Political tapestries of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless’, in E. J. Anderson and J. Farquhar (eds.) Visible Exports/Imports: New Research on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Culture, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge 2012), pp. 145-158.
Other significant contributions to journals, e.g. book reviews
Wilson, K.A., Review of Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States: the Unification of the Burgundian Netherlands 1380-1480, Reviews in History (2018). Online Open Access journal.
Wilson, K.A., Review of Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns by Samuel K. Cohn and Douglas Aiton, Social History 38: 4 (2013), pp. 510-542.
Wilson, K.A., Review of the exhibition, ‘Catherine’s world: devotion, demons and daily life in the 15th century’ held at Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, Renaissance Studies 24: 5 (2010), pp. 752-758.
- MA History (Glasgow)
- PGCE History (Aberdeen)
- M.Phil (Glasgow)
- PhD (Glasgow)
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy