Ingrid Rembold

I completed a BA in History and an MSt in Medieval History at Merton College, Oxford (2006-2010) before moving to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge for my PhD (2010-2014). I then held a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) postdoctoral scholarship at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (2014-15) before taking up a Junior Research Fellowship at Hertford College, Oxford (2015-2018). I started at Manchester in autumn 2018. My research to date examines themes relating to governance, monasticism, and Christianization in the early medieval ages.

My current research project, supported by a AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship, looks at monasticisms, gender and authority in the Carolingian world. Monasteries and rulers were not only entangled but fully interdependent in the Carolingian Empire (a polity encompassing much of Western Europe from 751-888). Rulers sought to regulate the practices of monastic life, while at the same time depending on monastic resources; monasteries sought to secure royal patronage and to shape royal policies. Yet these relationships diverged along gendered lines: while female monasteries were largely treated as Carolingian familial resources, abbots of male monasteries exerted significant agency in building institutional relationships with royal power. This study will underscore the gendered foundations of Carolingian monasticisms and provoke a reappraisal of Carolingian 'patrimonial' rule, in which royal authority, far from being vested solely in the person of the ruler, was actively constructed and deployed by male monastic communities.

PhD Supervision

I am happy to supervise postgraduate students working on early medieval Europe at both MA and PhD level.

Past PhD students include:

Eddie Meehan (Liverpool): 'Ideal and Moral Leadership in the Carolingian World', co-supervised with Marios Costambeys

Jonathan Tickle (Manchester): 'Dynasty and Succession: The Legitimation of Royal Authority in Ninth- and Tenth-Century England', co-supervised with Charles Insley

Domantas Audronis (Manchester): 'Un-Roman Empires, Post-Roman Worlds: Rome and Imperial Ideology in a Comparative European Context, 800-1000', co-supervised with Charles Insley