The University of Sheffield
Department of History

Dr. Amanda Power, B.A. (Sydney), Ph.D. (Cantab.)

Lecturer in Medieval History [Medieval religious and intellectual history; the history of the Mediterranean]

Photo of Dr. Amanda Power

Email: a.power@sheffield.ac.uk
Room: Jessop West: 2.12 | Telephone: (0114) 22 22560
Office Hours, Spring 2011-12: Wednesdays 11:00-13:00

Biography

Amanda Power was an undergraduate at the University of Sydney (Australia) and gained her PhD from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 2002. She was a research fellow for the European Commission research project: 'Kultur, Mobilität, Migration und Siedlung von Juden im mittelalterlichen Europa' (2001-2002) and held a research fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge (2002-2005). She became a lecturer in medieval history at Sheffield in September 2005.

 

Teaching and Research Supervision


Current Research
Amanda works on the intellectual, religious and political life of medieval Europe. She has recently completed a monograph, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (forthcoming, 2012), which re-imagines this prominent figure in the history of medieval science as a committed Franciscan and reformer. She is currently working on the development of the Franciscan order within its wider ecclesiastical, intellectual and social contexts between ca. 1239 and ca. 1275. She is particularly interested in the responses of religious and secular authorities to the new geographical information gathered in the wake of the Mongol conquests, and to the influx of Greco-Arabic learning from the Mediterranean world.

Research Interests
Drawing on these diverse interests, she will work towards a major study of the functioning of the mendicant orders within, and as products of, the complex, cosmopolitan society of medieval Europe. This study will investigate the distinctive religious and cosmographical imagination of the period and its impact upon public affairs. It will focus especially on the responses of the papacy, secular rulers, universities and religious orders to the new geographical information gathered by missionaries in the wake of the Mongol conquests and the influx of Greco-Arabic learning from the Mediterranean world. It will consider the ways that the apostolic imperative shaped relations with other groups, especially the eastern Christian churches. Above all, it will attempt to move forward somewhat static discussions of European `perceptions´ of the rest of the world by exploring a more interactive, responsive engagement with the surrounding societies.

Research Supervision
Amanda Power has taught undergraduate courses in medieval European history and historiography, currently offering modules on Mediterranean history from 500-1450: a Level Two Option, Sacred Violence in the Medieval Mediterranean (HST280), a Further Subject: The Muslim Conquest of Spain, 711-850 (HST3060) and a Special Subject: Muslims, Mongols and the West, 1095-1350. At postgraduate level, she offers an MA module: Imagining the Unseen in the Middle Ages (HST683). She is willing to supervise research in the areas of later medieval thought, the religious orders, expansion of European horizons, inter-faith relations and ecclesiastical history.

 

Administrative Roles and Responsibilities

 

Selected Publications