Professor Helen J Swift
Helen Swift's research interests straddle the late medieval and early modern periods, looking at the poetics of vernacular literature between 1330 and 1550. Her work is interdisciplinary, in that it often involves visual studies of text-image relationships, as well as studying the history of the book in this period of transition between manuscript and print cultures. She also integrates critical theory into her work as a tool for opening up new perspectives on earlier literature to modern readers. Her first book examined the literary and rhetorical structures of literary defences of women written by men in the period after Christine de Pizan. Her second book looked at questions of identity construction and narrative voice in late medieval France through the lens of literary epitaphs, in response to the question: who am I when I am dead? It featured as a TORCH 'Book at Lunchtime' in October 2017, and was highly commended as runner-up for the Society for French Studies R. Gapper Prize 2017. She is now working on a dialogue between how guide figures are represented in late-medieval didactic narratives and questions of guidance in the twenty-first-century academy; this was the topic of her plenary lecture at the 2023 Society for French Studies Conference.
She enjoys working in several collaborations. She has, for instance, participated in the MARGOT project, based at the University of Waterloo, Canada, in the SIEFAR project 'Discours sur l'égalité des femmes et des hommes', and in a British Academy-sponsored group on 'Text/Image Relations in Late Medieval French Culture'. With Prof Sophie Marnette, she co-ran a research group on 'Voices in Medieval French Narrative', funded by a British Academy Small Grant, and is now co-investigator on a John Fell Fund-supported project, 'Mapping Literary Ecosystems: (re)positioning and contextualising the Chastelaine de Vergi'.
Helen also collaborated with Dr Jessica Goodman on the topic of death, including a workshop hosted by TORCH under their headline 'Humanities and Identities' series: 'Whither Death?' Hear Jess and Helen's podcast about the event. She spoke at the 2019 Oxford Lieder Festival on 'Who Am I When I Am Dead?'
Contributing to the rich interdisciplinarity of Humanities research and teaching, she has convened the MSt in Women's Studies and the MSt in Medieval Studies, was a founding member of the Oxford Medieval Studies TORCH Programme and served on the committee of the Women in the Humanities Programme (now Intersectional Humanities).
Neurodiversity Network has been awarded for two years (from 2024 to 2026).
