Sociological approaches and the urban history of medieval England: research trends and new perspectives (2017–2022)

• Autores: Rachael Harkes
• Localización: Urban history, ISSN-e 1469-8706, Vol. 49, Num. 3, 2022, págs. 648-656
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In 2011, when Jelle Haemers looked back on a decade's worth of Ph.D. theses on urban centres in the medieval Low Countries, he identified three main trends in scholarship: the emphasis on individuals, rather than institutions; the increasing use of new methodologies, such as social network analysis (SNA) and prosopography; and the deployment of inter-disciplinary perspectives. Haemers’ intuition proved prescient; recent doctoral contributions to the historiography of medieval English towns and cities tend, generally, to fall along similar lines. In many ways, this is natural, and a testament to the enduring legacy and successes of earlier works. But, as the following discussion will elaborate, important and divergent steps have also been made, pushing our perceptions of pre-modern urban societies in new directions. Medieval urban history remains a vibrant area for study, with Ph.D. students forming an important section of its vanguard.