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Dr Helen Gittos

Dr Helen Gittos

Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History

Balliol College and Brasenose College

01865 271574helen.gittos@history.ox.ac.uk I am a medieval historian with wide interests. I studied English Literature at Newcastle University before coming to Oxford as a graduate student. I taught at the University of Kent for ten years before coming back to Oxford to take up my current post.

Research Interests

  • Medieval cultural and social history
  • Church History
  • History of Written Languages
  • Medieval liturgy

I am interested in how the past challenges our preconceptions and helps us to imagine how differently the world can be experienced and understood.

Current projects include a book on the use of English in the liturgy before the Reformation, spanning the period from c. 700-c.1550AD.

Alongside this, I am working on aspects of British history in the sixth and seventh centuries, particularly drawing on archaeological sources.

I have long been interested in places and the evidence for past people in the landscape. In connection with this, I am leading a collaborative research project on Cerne Abbas, Dorset with Hugh Willmott and Michael Shapland.

Much of my work has been on the history of the church and its rituals in the Middle Ages, especially using liturgical sources as a rich vein of evidence for many aspects of the social, cultural and religious history of the early Middle Ages. My first book was Liturgy, Architecture and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England  ; I have also co-edited two collections of essays on the topic: The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (2005) and Understanding Medieval Liturgy (2015).

A second strand of my research is about language. I’ve written about the use of Old English in liturgical contexts and also on the audience for Old English texts.

I enjoy working collaboratively and learnt a great deal from an AHRC International Research Network that I led with Sarah Hamilton, from which came Understanding Medieval Liturgy (2016). I am one of the co-investigators on Worked in Stone, an AHRC-funded project to complete the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture,  an Advisory Editor for Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, a council member of the Henry Bradshaw Society, and on the advisory board for Fontes Anglo-Saxonici. I am also Director of  the Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland and a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research seminar on the History of Liturgy.

Publications

The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context
Featured Publication

The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context

Speculum 99 (2024)

T. Morcom & H. Gittos

The recent dating of the Cerne Abbas Giant came as a surprise. This huge, naked figure was cut into a Dorset hillside not, as many have supposed, in prehistory, nor in the early modern period, but in the early Middle Ages. This means that for the first time it is possible to place the Cerne Giant within a cultural context. In this article, we propose an explanation for when and why he was originally cut as an image of Hercules. 

 

DPhil Students

I welcome applications from DPhil and Masters students wanting to work on any relevant research topics.

Jennifer Coulton

DPhil Student

Tanya Heath

DPhil Student

Robert Klapper

DPhil Student

Natasha Symes

DPhil Student

Charlotte Wood

DPhil Student

Recent DPhil Students

Megan Bunce, Shrines and special graves in Britain and Ireland c.600-850

Geoff Sedlezky, The Significance of Doorway Positions In English Medieval Parochial Churches and Chapels

Ciaran Arthur , The Liturgy of “Charms” in Anglo-Saxon England

 

Recent Masters Students

Alex Still, ‘Hroðgar’s Horse: The Evidence for an Interconnected Elite Across the North Sea’

Darcy Holland, ‘Women and Writing in Eastern England c. 450-800’

Robert Klapper, ‘The Prittlewell Princely Burial, the Liudhard Medalet, and the Anglo-Saxon Iron ‘Lamps’

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