Role
Lecturer / Senior Lecturer
Dr Hodgson is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict (CSRC) at NTU, and Unit of Assessment Co-ordinator for D28 History in preparation for REF 2021. She also sits on the College Research Degrees Committee at NTU.
She teaches on the following courses and modules:
- MA in History (Course Leader)
- HIST 30117 Dissertation Module
- HIST 30317 Crusading Cultures and Communities (module leader)
- HIST 20317 The Crusades and the Latin East c. 1095-1198 (module leader)
- HIST 20117 The Historian's Craft
- HIST 10217 Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
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
As director for the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Dr. Hodgson has strong research focus in these areas and is keen to explore not just military encounters but also social, political, cultural, economic, textual and material forms of conflict. More can be found about the centres activities here. Her research and teaching focus mainly on the Crusades and the expansion of Christendom, with a special interest in social, cultural and gender history: she is the author of Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Boydell, 2007). She has also published diverse articles on Norman identity, political culture, animal symbolism, Honour and Shame, and Armenian Cilicia. She has recently completed an essay collection on Crusading Masculinities (Routledge) and is currently writing a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan, Gender and the Crusades. She also has a keen interest in Digital Humanities and Heritage Science in relation to manuscript studies, and is working jointly with colleagues in NTU Global Heritage and the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, (NZ) 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 and Conflict (Medieval and Early Modern)
- Medieval social and cultural history.
- The history of the crusades: Latin Christian expansion and frontier societies in the Near East, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.
- Heresy (esp. the Albigensian Crusades).
- Chivalry, social status, knighthood and warfare.
- Women's History, Gender Studies and the history of Masculinities.
- The medieval church: religious men and women.
- Relics and the growth of saints’ cults.
- The development of medieval historical writing: chronicles; annals; gestae; genealogies and family histories and "fictional" literature.
- Late Medieval British History (Hundred Years War, popular culture, Wars of the Roses).
- The Norman Conquest and Anglo-Norman England, including Domesday Studies.
- Convergences and transitions between medieval and early modern history.
- Digital Humanities and Manuscript Studies.
Presently her supervisees are researching the following topics:
- Relations between Armenian Cilicia and Antioch in the early Thirteenth Century.
- Routiers, Brabancons and Cotteraux: Mercenaries and Crusade in Southern France, 1179-1229.
- Weak of body, unstable of heart’: The Queens of Jerusalem as a case study of female sovereignty on the frontier of Christendom.
- Southeast Asian Illuminated Manuscripts : A Study of the Maritime Silk Road Using Scientific Imaging and AI.
- The Templars in Bologna.
- From Knights to Nobles: the critical Twelfth Century in the age of the Crusades.
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)
- External Examiner, (Medieval and Early Modern) University of Lancaster MA in History (Medieval and Early Modern)
- 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
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)
Sponsors and collaborators
Previous funded projects have included:
- From Myth to Majesty: An Historical and Scientific Exploration of Fifteenth-Century British Royal Genealogies from the 'Noah' Tradition sponsored by NTU Global Heritage and UC Christchurch Marsden Seed Fund.
- Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, Research Associate, University of Cambridge (2006-2007) sponsored by AHRC
- Hull electronic Domesday project, Research Assistant, University of Hull (2004-2006) sponsored by AHRC
Publications
Recent Publications
- ‘Leading the People 'as duke, count and father': the Masculinities of Abbot Martin of Pairis in Gunther of Pairis' in Natasha Hodgson, Katherine Lewis and Matthew Mesley ed. Crusading Masculinities, Crusades Subsidia (Routledge, 2019).
- ‘Reputation, authority and masculine identities in the political culture of the First Crusaders: the career of Arnulf of Chocques’ History 102 (2017)
- The Canterbury Roll Digital Edition (Canterbury University Press 2017) ed. Chris Jones (as project adviser.)
- ‘Normans and competing masculinities on the First Crusade’ in Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World eds Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldham (Boydell, 2015)
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