Dr Elizabeth Gemmill

Biography

Elizabeth joined the Department in 2006 and is an Associate Professor in History and a Fellow of Kellogg College. She directs the Postgraduate Certificate in Historical Studies and the Department’s Weekly Classes and Online Short Courses. She was named in 2012 as ‘Most Acclaimed Lecturer’ in the Department for Continuing Education by Oxford University Student Union. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She was Junior Proctor in 2016-17. 

Teaching

The main focus of Elizabeth's teaching is in medieval history, and she supervises graduate student theses and dissertations in later medieval social, economic, and ecclesiastical history.    

Research interests

Elizabeth’s research interests are in later medieval English and Scottish social, economic and ecclesiastical history. She has recently completed a scholarly edition of the register of John Salmon, bishop of Norwich 1299 - 1325, including an analysis of the bishop’s career, the character of the diocesan clergy, and the distribution of patronage in the diocese. Her current project is a book on the economic history of the medieval north east, based on the evidence of prices in Durham Priory’s obedientiary accounts. 

Publications

Books

The Register of John Salmon, bishop of Norwich 1299 -1325 (Woodbridge: Boydell, for The Canterbury and York Society, 2019)  

The Nobility and Ecclesiastical Patronage in Thirteenth-Century England (Boydell Press, 2013)

Aberdeen Guild Court Records, 1437- 1468 (Scottish History Society, 2005)

(with Nicholas Mayhew) Changing Values in Medieval Scotland: a Study of Prices, Money, and Weights and Measures (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Selected articles

‘Debt, distraint, display, and dead men’s treasure: material culture in late medieval Aberdeen’,  Journal of Medieval History, 46 (2020), 350 -372. 

'Prices from the Durham obedientiary account rolls, 1278-1367 in Money, Prices and Wages: Essays in Honour of Professor Nicholas Mayhew, eds Martin Allen and D'Maris Coffman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

(with Ben Dodds and Phillip Schofield) 'Durham grain prices, 1278-1515, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th series, 39 (2011) 

'The earls and their clergy in the reign of Edward I', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 88.i (2010)

'Ecclesiastical patronage of the laity in later medieval England', The Local Historian, 38.3 (2008)

'Town and region: the corn market in Aberdeen, c. 1398-c. 1468' in Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death: common themes and regional variations eds. Ben Dodds and Richard Britnell (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2008) 

(with Nicholas Mayhew), 'A market economy, 1100-1800' in  M. Lynch, E.P. Dennison, and D.Ditchburn, eds, Aberdeen before 1800: a new history (Tuckwell Press, 2002)

'The king's companions: the evidence of royal charter witness lists from the reign of Edward I', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 83 (2001).

'Signs and symbols in medieval Scottish trade', Review of Scottish Culture, 13 (2000)

'The ecclesiastical patronage of the English earls during the reign of Edward I', in P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd, eds, Thirteenth-century England, III. Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference 1989, eds P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (Boydell Press, 1991)