Hannah Skoda, Fellow and Tutor in History, St John's College, Oxford; University Lecturer in History

Hannah Skoda was Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. She has published on the subject of concepts of the law in medieval France, co-editing an interdisciplinary volume on legalism with the anthropologist, Paul Dresch, and she is currently embarking on research into the misbehaviour of students in fifteenth-century Oxford, Paris and Heidelberg. Other publications have ranged from Dante to the experience of disability in the Middle Ages. She is particularly interested in the relationship between constructions of deviance, and the ways in which those thus labelled react to these stereotypes.

Winner of the 2014 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Best Book Prize and winner of the 2014 Philip Leverhulme Prize

"Skoda's overview of the medieval theory and norms with regard to aggression and its punishment, on the one hand, and the concrete violations of these customs and the penalties imposed upon the perpetrators, on the other, is one of the most complete summaries of the use of violence in medieval France available. It rightly stresses the fact that the vengeful acts of citizens were not meaningless or aberrant irregularities, but phenomena at the heart of urban life." - Jelle Haemers, The American Historical Review

"Skoda must be applauded for the strength and coverage of her analysis of gender and medieval violence and her successful approach to integrating archival and literary sources." - Zrinka Stahuljak, French Studies

"Skoda not only fills an important lacuna but also articulates, in a highly nuanced manner, how violence functioned as a popular form of communication and was integral to premodern communities sense of self. Interdisciplinarity was a prerequisite for this book, and Skodas is an accomplished one. She has gone where earlier social and criminal historians were reluctant to venture... The result is a thought-provoking cultural history of premodern and mainly urban violence that will be read with great profit, especially by social and urban historians, and by students of violence in general." - Guy Geltner, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis