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Natasha Hodgson

Associate Professor

School of Arts & Humanities

Staff Group(s)
History, Heritage and Global Cultures

Role

Associate Professor

Dr Hodgson is Director of the Centre for Research in History, Heritage and Memory Studies at NTU, and has been Unit of Assessment Co-ordinator for D28 History since 2014. She is an affiliate member of the ISAAC research centre (Imaging for Art History, Archaeology and Conservation). She also sits on the College Research Degrees Committee at NTU.

She teaches on the following courses and modules:

  • MA in History
  • HIST 40210 Making History, Digital Medieval block
  • HIST 400 Dissertation Module
  • BA in History/History and Politics/History and IR
  • HIST 30123 History Special Project
  • HIST 30323 Women and Gender in the Pre-Modern World

Career overview

Prior to taking up a permanent post at NTU in 2007, Natasha Hodgson worked as an AHRC research associate at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Hull.  She has taught at Hull and Royal Holloway, University of London, as well as at the University of Canterbury Christchurch (NZ) as Canterbury Fellow in 2018.

Research areas

Dr. Hodgson researches social, cultural and gender history and Digital Humanities methods, across a range of contexts, continents and periods. She is the author of Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Boydell, 2017). She has also published diverse articles on Norman identity, political culture, animal symbolism, Honour and Shame, and Armenian Cilicia. She has recently co-edited an essay collection on Miracles, Political Authority and Violence (Routledge) and is currently writing a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan, Gender and the Crusades. She has a keen interest in Digital Humanities and Heritage Science, with projects engaging with prosopography, manuscript studies and data visualization. She collaborates with colleagues in the Cultural Heritage Research Peak, the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, (NZ) and the London Society of Antiquaries on a project based around fifteenth century royal genealogical rolls. Natasha is keen to attract proposals from prospective postgraduate researchers on the following themes:

  • Religion, Conflict and Resolution
  • Social and cultural history.
  • Women's History, Gender Studies and the history of Masculinities.
  • Crusader Studies
  • Digital Humanities
  • Heresy
  • Chivalry, social status, knighthood and warfare.
  • The medieval church: religious men and women.
  • Relics and the growth of saints’ cults.
  • The development of historical writing: chronicles; annals; gestae; genealogies and family histories and "fictional" literature.
  • Late Medieval British History  (Hundred Years War, Peasant's Revolt, Wars of the Roses).
  • The Norman Conquest and Anglo-Norman England, including Domesday Studies.

Presently her PhD supervisees are researching the following topics:

  • “Henrietta Maria: Generalissima, Queen Consort and Terror of Parliament”
  • Women and confinement in political, legal, military, and religious contexts, 1000-1300
  • “Life in Mexico: Reclaiming Frances Calderón de la Barca as a historian of the Conquest of Mexico”
  • “Crusade Songs and Anti-Frankish Jihad Poetry; an Historical and Ethnomusicological Study”
  • “Opening the gates: increasing opportunities for the representation of gender and LGBTQI+ in castle histories” in collaboration with Nottingham Castle
  • Longitude revisited: exploring the role of the transatlantic slave trade as a driving force behind the creation of the Board of Longitude and the marine chronometer, 1675-1775
  • Latin law and the Indigenous Population of the Crusader States
  • Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japheth’: The production, dissemination and use of royal genealogical chronicles in the first reign of Henry VI (1422–61)
  • “We had some laws (but now no laws).”Gender and Criminality in the East Midlands during the Civil War, Personal Rule and Interrregnum.
  • A study of 18th to 19th-century Nanpin and Japanese Nanpin School paintings through art historical and material analysis
  • Southeast Asian Illuminated Manuscripts : A Study of the Maritime Silk Road Using Scientific Imaging and AI.

Further information may be obtained from the NTU Doctoral School.

External activity

Current

  • Editor, Nottingham Medieval Studies (Journal)
  • Editor, Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History (Routledge Book Series)
  • Editor, Advances in Crusades Studies (Routledge Book Series)
  • Editorial Board, Transactions of the Thoroton Society (Journal)
  • Co-founder Crusading, Masculinities Network
  • Steering Committee, Northern Network for the Study of the Crusades
  • Member of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East
  • Member of the AHRC UK-Ireland Digital Humanities network governance working group.
  • External Examiner BA in Medieval History, University of St Andrews

Previous

  • Canterbury Fellow, University of Canterbury, Christchurch (NZ) 2018
  • Donald Bullough Fellow, University of St. Andrews (2015)
  • External Examiner Royal Holoway University of London, MA in Crusader Studies (2011-15)
  • External Examiner,  (Medieval and Early Modern) University of Lancaster MA in History (Medieval and Early Modern)

Press expertise

Natasha Hodgson is happy to comment on current affairs relating to any of the above research themes, more broadly represented by:

Medieval Social and Cultural History

The Crusades

Women's History, Gender History and Masculinities

Medievalism (representations of the medieval historical past) in film, TV, books etc.

Medieval Literature

Digital Humanities

Course(s) I teach on