Sarah McKeagney

Thesis

Thesis

Striking a Bargain: Breach of Faith and Perjury in English church courts, 1450-1500. 

Supervisor: Dr Tom Johnson 

Research

Research

My research considers ideas of debt and indebtedness in late-medieval England, particularly as it manifests in English church court records. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, my thesis investigates how these cultures of obligation and debt were informed by gender, place and hierarchy. In doing so, my thesis offers a reassessment on our understanding of lower church courts in late-medieval England as reflections of local (and localised) practices. More broadly, I am interested in court records as archives and the ways in which ordinary voices might be recovered from them. 

Papers and Publications

Publications 

• S. McKeagney, Arvind Thomas, Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2019, pp. xiv 267, $81.00." British Catholic History, 36(1), 92–94. Cambridge University Press.

Conference Papers

• International Medieval Congress, July 2023. "An Economy of Stuff: Material Debt in English Church Courts, 1450-1500".

• Gender and Medieval Studies Conference: Aftermath, Recovery, Repair, January 2023. "Black Antonia and Mariana More: The Recovery of Race in Late Medieval Court Records."

• Masculinities and Law in Premodern Europe Conference, November 2022. "Policing Masculine Misgovernance:  Boundary-Crossing and Cross-Dressing in Late Medieval England." 

• Economic History Society Residential Training Course, November 2022. "The geography of Fidei Laesio litigation in London's Commissary Court."

• Cambridge Legal and Social History Workshop, June 2021. "Marginalisation in London’s Lower Courts, c. 1470."

External Activities

• Wolfson Scholar 2020-2023. 

• Graduate Teaching Assistant in the History Department at the University of York

• Co-convenor of SCRAMS (somewhat coherent research about medieval studies), Centre of Medieval Studies, University of York.