In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews the winner of the Royal Studies Journal Book Prize 2024--Matthew Fitzpatrick. In the interview, we discuss his prize winning book The Kaiser and the Colonies: Monarchy in the Age of Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022), including the inspiration behind the project, the character of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his relationships (good, bad and ugly!) with other global monarchs.

Guest Bio: Matt Fitzpatrick is a Future Fellow and Matthew Flinders Professor of International History at Flinders University. His research is in the field of modern European history, in particular German imperial history. He is the author of three books on this topic, The Kaiser and the Colonies being his most recent. A fourth book, on the history of German Samoa, is due for publication in late 2024 / early 2025. He lives and works on Kaurna country, which is in South Australia.

Links/Further information:

• Matt Fitzpatrick--institutional webpage
• Project Webpage: Monarchy, Democracy and Empire in Germany
• Follow Matt on Bluesky
• Follow Matt on X: @kilderbenhauser

This episode is an interview with Nadia van Pelt about her new book, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII which came out with OUP in December 2023. In this episode Dr Ellie Woodacre asks the author about the inspiration behind the book, the role of the fool at the Tudor court and about an exciting document that Nadia discovered which sheds new light on Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves.

Guest Bio: Nadia van Pelt is a lecturer at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. She holds a PhD from the University of Southampton, and published her first book with Routledge in 2019. Her research sits on the intersection between literary and cultural history, with a focus on drama, performance, and ritual.

Publications:
· Drama in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Playmakers and Their Strategies (Routledge, 2019)

· Challenging the ‘Ugliness’ of Anne of Cleves, History Today, April 2024

· Speaking of Kings and Popes under the Shadow of Henry VIII’s Treason Act: Bale’s King Johan, RSJ 8.1(2021)

· Katherine of Aragon's Deathbed: Why Chapuys Brought a Fool, Early Theatre 24.1 (2021)

· Royal epistolary courtship in Latin? Arthur Tudor's “love letter” to Katherine of Aragon at the Archivo General de Simancas and Francesco Negri's Ars Epistolandi, Renaissance Studies 38.2 (2024)

· John Blanke’s Wages: No Business Like Show Business, Medieval English Theatre 44 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805430438.002 [JSTOR or Cambridge Core]

· Teens and Tudors: The Pedagogy of Royal Studies, RSJ 1.1 (2014)

· Enter Queen: Metatheatricality and the Monarch on/off Stage, The Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2014)

This episode, hosted by Dr Ellie Woodacre, features another roundtable with members of the Henry on Tour project team--we discuss the progresses of Henry VIII and the big themes of the project including kingship & queenship, logistics, legacy and performance.

About the project: This exciting three-year venture brings together a cross-disciplinary team of scholars and technical specialists from both the academic and heritage sectors to explore, evaluate and reconceptualise Henry VIII’s progresses. Led by Historic Royal Palaces in collaboration with the Universities of York and Newcastle, the main research focus will be on the logistics of Henry’s journeys around his realm and their performance as a spectacle, their significance in demonstrating kingship and queenship, and their legacy for the study and interpretation of the Tudors in schools and at heritage sites. The project will map Henry VIII’s complete itinerary for the first time and the associated landscapes, the routes taken, the venues visited and the palaces, country houses and ecclesiastical institutions that accommodated the royal household. Henry VIII on Tour will thus be presenting new stories, posing and answering innovative research questions, and hopefully inspiring greater curiosity about local places and heritage sites. As well as contributing to our understanding of Henry VIII, his wives and court and the relationship with his people in historical terms, the project will be reflecting on what monarchy and visibility means to us in the 21st century.

Check out their upcoming project events HERE.

Guest Bios:
Anthony Musson Project lead / Theme lead: logistics
Historic Royal Palaces

Professor Anthony Musson joined Historic Royal Palaces in 2018 to lead and foster a distinctive vision for the charity’s research into historic palaces, diverse communities, landscapes and collections. He is editor with JPD Cooper of Royal Journeys in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2022).

Kate Giles Theme lead: legacy
University of York

Kate is a building historian and archaeologist with a particular interest in the study of late medieval and early modern communal and public buildings. As Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture, Kate works with national, regional and local organisations to find creative ways of sustaining and sharing their heritage with others.

Kirsty Wright Post-Doctoral Research Assistant
Historic Royal Palaces

My research focuses on early modern architecture, politics and government. I completed my PhD at the University of York on the Exchequer of Receipt in the Palace of Westminster, which explored the relationship between institutional development and the architecture of the palace.

Toby Ward
Ensemble Pro Victoria

Founded at Cambridge in 2015, EPV is a pioneer in combining high-level performance with the latest research. Under their director Toby Ward, EPV won joint-first prize at the London International Festival of Early Music Young Ensemble Competition (2020). Their Gramophone award-nominated debut recording, Robert Fayrfax: Music for Tudor Kings and Queens, was released by Delphian in 2021. Their second album, Tudor Music Afterlives (Delphian, 2022) includes new polyphonic reconstructions.

In this episode we feature a project which aims to collect all known images of queens and royal women, called “Reines en images”. Host Ellie Woodacre interviews the project's creator, Matthieu Mensch, discussing the genesis of the project, plans for future expansion and the relevance to images of royal women today. If you are interested in getting involved with the project, Matthieu would love to hear from you, see his contact details below to get in touch.

Guest information:

• Matthieu's webpage at the University of Strasbourg
• Social Media:
  • Instagram @matthieu.mensch
  • Twitter/X @MatthieuMensch

Bio: Matthieu Mensch obtained his PhD in History from the University of Strasbourg, under joint supervision with the University Federico II of Naples. He worked on the construction and use of images of the Duchesses of Angoulême and Berry from their lifetime to our contemporary reappropriations. He is currently a research associate at the ARCHE Laboratory in the Faculty of Historical Sciences at the University of Strasbourg. His research focuses on queenship and representations, and his first book on the female entourage of Louis XVIII (Les Femmes de Louis XVIII) will be published in September 2024 with Perrin. He is also preparing a book on Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, to be published by Routledge in its Lives of Royal Women series.

This episode features e-Reginae, an exciting project in the field of queenship studies, based at the University of Lisbon. This roundtable includes three members of the project team: project leader Professor Ana Maria S.A Rodrigues, Inês Olaia and Pedro de Sousa. We'll be discussing the project aims, the inspiration behind e-Reginae and their plans for the future--certainly a project with real potential for fellow researchers in queenship and royal studies!

Find out more about the project on their website and by following them on social media!
The project website: http://ereginae.wordpress.com

Instagram - @e.reginae

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ereginaeproject

Twitter/X - @eReginaeProject

Guest information:

• Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues (MA, Sorbonne Université, 1981; PhD University of Minho, 1992; Habilitation, University of Minho, 2002) is Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon and a researcher at its Centre for History. Her research focuses on Portuguese medieval queenship, from the queens’ estates and revenue to jurisdictional and political powers to religious and artistic patronage. Her most recent publications are “Splendour in life, humility in death: Queen Leonor de Lencastre (1458-1525) and the women around her”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 16-1 (2024); Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy, Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, Manuela Santos Silva and Jonathan Spangler eds. (Routledge, 2020); “The Queen Consort in Castile and Portugal. María de Aragon (b. 1403-d. 1445), Queen of Castile and Leonor de Aragon (b. 1405/1408-d. 1445), Queen of Portugal”, in J. Roe and J. Andrews eds., Representing Women’s Political Identity in the Early Modern Iberian World (Routledge, 2020).
• Inês Olaia is a PhD candidate in Medieval History at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon with a scholarship from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. Her thesis is titled “By the Grace of God Queen of Portugal: queens’ functions and practices in Medieval Portugal”. She holds a MA in Medieval History, with a dissertation on the queens' rule of the towns of Alenquer and Aldeia Galega da Merceana. Her publications include a study of an inquest into Filipa of Coimbra, sister of queen Isabel in 2022, a study on the rule of queens Teresa and Sancha over several towns in Portugal and a work on the itineraries of the queens of Manuel I in 2023.
• Pedro de Sousa is a 3rd-year student of the History degree at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (FLUL) and the Grant Holder of the eReginae project. His responsibilities consisted of searching and locating the documents issued by the medieval queens of Portugal, as well as their paleographical transcription and uploading to the EGPA (Escritório Galego-Português Antigo) platform. Pedro is also one of the founders and directors of the History Students Union at FLUL.

In this episode, Susannah Lyon-Whaley is joined by Susan Taylor-Leduc to discuss her latest book and ongoing research on Marie Antoinette and gardens.

Susan's 2022 book on Marie Antoinette - Marie Antoinette's Legacy: The Politics of French Garden Patronage and Picturesque Design, 1775-1867 - is available from Amsterdam University Press here.

More information on Susan and her research is available on her website.

Susan’s reading recommendations:

● Griffey, Erin. ‘“The Rose and Lily Queen”: Henrietta Maria’s Fair Face and the Power of Beauty at the Stuart Court.’ Renaissance Studies 35, no. 5 (2021): 811–836.

● Hyde, Elizabeth. Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

● Lyon-Whaley, Susannah, ed. Floral Culture and the Tudor and Stuart Courts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.

In this episode, Ellie Woodacre interviews Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on his new book The Cleopatras. The Forgotten Queens of Egypt, published by Wildfire/Basic Books in May 2024. We discuss the need for this book which looks at all seven of the Cleopatras who were dynamic and fascinating co-rulers of Ptolemaic Egypt. We also discuss the particular dynamics of Ptolemaic rulership and the ways in which it brought together elements of Macedonian and Egyptian ideas of rule. In addition, we talk about how these women were 'goddess queens' who were worshipped both in their own time and after their death and how they used this quasi-divine status to enhance their power.

Guest Bio: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff University. His research concentrates, in the main, on the Persian empire, the ancient Near East, and the Hellenistic world. He also works on gender and reception history. Lloyd has published extensively, often with a focus on monarchy and court society. Recent books include King and Court in Ancient Persia (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), The Hellenistic Court (Classical Press of Wales, 2016), Persians: the Age of the Great Kings (Wildfire/Basic Books, 2022), Kleopatra Thea and Kleopatra III. Sister-Queens in the High-Hellenistic Period (Routledge, 2022), and Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther: Achaemenid Court Culture in the Hebrew Bible (I.B. Tauris, 2023).

In this episode on Egyptian kingship we are speaking to Dr Caleb R. Hamilton (Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Kāi Tahu). Caleb is the Pouārahi, Principal Advisor Environmental Outcomes for Houkura, the Independent Māori Statutory Board. He was previously an Aporei Mātai (Principal Anaylst) at Te Puni Kōkiri and was Pou Matua Taonga Tuku Iho (Principal Advisor, Heritage) at the Department of Conservation.

Caleb currently holds an Research Associate position with Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. He earned his PhD in archaeology and Egyptology from Monash University and his MA, BA Hons and LLB from Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. He has published on the Early Dynastic period, early Egyptian kingship, and the Western Desert and will soon produce new work on mummified human remains in Aotearoa as well as finalising his PhD into a manuscript for publication.

Find out more about Caleb and his research at his academia.edu page.