Project Overview

The research-in-progress reflected in History in our Bones has been funded by grants from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Our project – “Word of Mouth: Embodied Stories of Medieval Women at Work” – is dedicated to recovering the stories of premodern religious women by combining historical research with the most recent advances in archaeological science.

TeamNun has already uncovered evidence of a number of individuals buried in monastic cemeteries who played a role in the work life of their community while having significant physical impairments. The evidence provided by these individuals challenges received narratives about the exclusion of disabled individuals from premodern religious communities.

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Further funding has been provided by a Leadership Initiative for Tailored Support (LIFTS) award from the University of St Andrews Office of Research Innovation Services (RIS). Our LIFTS grant is supporting the preparation of applications for research funding from the Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council for a project, “Visible Disabilities in Premodern Europe".

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This follow-on project aims to make past individuals, marginalised by historiographical and archaeological narratives, visible by revisiting impairment and disability from Late Antique to Early Modern Europe. The interdisciplinary Visible Disabilities team is pioneering a new approach to understanding the daily lives of people with physical disabilities and healed trauma in premodern Europe. We are historians, archaeologists, archaeological scientists, forensic imaging experts, medical professionals, and biomedical engineers specialising in the biomechanics of skeletal impairment and healed trauma working together to challenge current historical narratives that relegate impaired and disabled individuals to the fringes of pre-modern societies.