Professor Denis Renevey (principal investigator)
Professor Denis Renevey gained his doctoral degree at the University of Oxford in 1993. He has taught at the universities of Oxford (Greyfriars), Bern, Fribourg, Neuchâtel, Geneva, Venice International University and Lausanne, where he was appointed professor of medieval English language and literature in 2005. In 2001 he published Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries of the Song of Songs, with the University of Wales Press. He has since published widely on mystical and devotional literature, including devotional compilations, Margery Kempe and the Cloud-author. His latest monograph, Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Middle English Literature c.1100 — c.1530 is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2022. Before this current project, Denis successfully led two other major SNSF projects, ‘Late Medieval Religiosity in England: The Evidence of Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Devotional Compilations’ (2013-2016) and ‘Region and Nation in Late Medieval Devotion to Northern English Saints’ (2016-20).
For more information on his publications and research, click here.
Dr Christiania Whitehead (senior research fellow)
After gaining her doctoral degree at the University of Oxford, Christiania Whitehead taught Middle English literature at the University of Warwick before relocating to Switzerland, where she presently teaches at the universities of Lausanne, Bern and Geneva. Christiania specialises in Middle English religious literature, in particular, allegory, hagiography, lyric, devotional writing and mysticism. Publications relevant to the current project include articles on the Cloud-author, Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century English mystics, and the Meditations of the Monk of Farne, a series of sophisticated Latin contemplations by a Benedictine hermit. Her latest monograph The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2020) places these Meditations in their northern hagiographical milieu.
For more information on her publications and research, click here.
Olena Danylovych (doctoral researcher)
During her master’s degree at the University of Lausanne, Olena Danylovych studied medieval pregnancy and how pain is written in Middle English religious literature. She worked as a research assistant on the ‘Region and Nation’ project, and has taught two BA2-level Medieval Literature courses at the University of Lausanne. Olena has recently started her PhD as part of the ‘Reconfiguring the Apophatic Tradition’ SNSF-funded project, focusing in particular on the concept of mental unity as a necessary step towards apophatic contemplation and subsequent union with the Godhead. Her research interests include medieval mysticism and women’s hagiographies.
