I am a historian of Europe's later Middle Ages with a particular interest in power and how it worked in institutions, like royal and seigneurial courts, and in social interactions, such as wars and popular uprisings. Most of my work has concentrated on France under the Capetian and Valois dynasties, and I have a special love for the fourteenth century (#bestcentury), which was the period of the Hundred Years War and the Black Death.

My most recent book, House of Lilies: The Dynasty that Made Medieval France, tells the story of the Capetian royal family, who created the most powerful and prestigious kingdom in Christian Europe through a combination of luck, skill, and sheer (often bloody) ruthlessness. I am currently working on a follow-up book, currently entitled Blood of the Lilies: Royal France in an Age of War and Plague, that will be published in 2027 or 2028.

Along with numerous journal articles and book chapters, I am also the author of Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250-1400 and The Jacquerie Revolt of 1358. The first showed how the royal French state dealt with the wars waged by nobles and other powerful people against one another at a time when no one could claim a ‘monopoly on legitimate violence’ in the way that modern governments do. The secondis about is about one of the most famous – but enigmatic – revolts of the Middle Ages, when villagers took up arms against the nobility, unleashing unprecedented waves of bloody violence and counter-vengeance across northern France. 

My two co-edited books are The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt (with Dirk Schoenaers) and Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France (with Meredith Cohen).

I teach a variety of undergraduate modules and postgraduate reading classes related to my interests and am happy to talk to prospective PhD students and postdoctoral researchers about their projects.

I am represented by Adam Gauntlett at Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.