Dr Anne Bailey

 

Departmental Tutor

Biography

Dr Anne E Bailey, MA, DPhil (Oxon), gained her doctorate in medieval history in 2010, and has prior teaching experience at the universities of Oxford and Exeter. She is an associate member of the History Faculty at Oxford, and has published widely on the topics of medieval saints’ cults, hagiography and pilgrimage, and on medieval women. She is currently writing a book on medieval and contemporary pilgrimage.

Beyond Oxford University, Anne is a co-editor of the Routledge Book Series, Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism, and a member of the Academic Association for the Camino Inglés: roles that reflect her wider interest in Christian and post-Christian pilgrimage. When not writing, researching or teaching, Anne is often found participating in pilgrimages herself both in the UK and overseas.

Research interests

• Medieval and contemporary pilgrimage
• Medieval women and gender
• Medieval saints’ cults
• Female pilgrimage in high-medieval England
• Pilgrimage anthropology

Publications

‘Healing Journeys: Reading Twelfth-Century Miracle Stories as Conversion Narratives’, Journal of Medieval History (2026)

‘Medieval Pilgrimage in Oxford’, La Gran Obra de los Caminos de Santiago (2026)

‘Walking Retreats: What Draws the Pilgrim?’, Church Times, 02/05/2025.

‘Pilgrim Traffic Along the “English” Camiño Inglés in the Late Twelfth Century’, Cuadernos del Camiño Inglés (Santiago de Compostela: Ascociación de Concellos do Camiño Inglés, 2024), pp. 16-28

‘La Peregrinación de Finchale en la Edad Media’, Mar Por Medio: O Camino Inglés en Inglaterra, ed. Carlos J Rodríguez Carro (Coruña: Universidade da Coruña, 2024), pp. 39-53

‘Walking in the Footsteps of our Ancestors’, CSJ Bulletin, Spring 2024, pp. 51-2

‘Pilgrimage: The Road to Post-Secular Spirituality?’, Independent Catholic News, 05/24/2024.

‘Can Pilgrimage be Evangelistic?’. Church Times, 23/02/2024. 

‘Not A Peace March, A Pilgrimage.’ Independent Catholic News, 22/01/2024 

‘The Hagiographical Landscape of Twelfth-Century England’, Preternature 13.1 (2024), 155-75

‘Revisiting Female Pilgrimage in Medieval Oxford: Evidence from the Miracula sancta Frideswide’, Journal of Religious History (2023). Open Access. 

‘Journey or Destination? Rethinking Pilgrimage in the Western Tradition’, Religions 14.9 (2023). Open Access. 

“Something Special, Otherworldly: Why so many People are making maritime pilgrimages.” The Conversation, 18/09/2023. 

‘Pilgrimage and Miracles Under Sail’, Independent Catholic News, 19/07/2023   

‘Medieval Perspectives on Pilgrimage’, in Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Pilgrimages: Historical, Current and Future Directions, ed. Heather A. Warfield (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2023), pp. 31-58

‘The Revival of Walking Pilgrimages in its Historical Context’, in El Camino Inglés Un peregrinaje a través y a lo largo de encuentros interculturales, Miscelánea 1, ed. Penelope Johnston and Cristóbal Ramirez (La Coruna: La Asociación de Concellos do Camiño Inglés, 2023), pp. 7-24

‘Walk Left Me Speechless’, Church Times, 10/03/2023, pp. 20-1. 

‘How the Queen’s Queue can be seen as a Modern Form of Pilgrimage’, The Conversation, 26/09/2022. 

‘Micro Pilgrimage: A New Post-Secular Trend?’, Religions, 13.7  (2022). Open access.

Review of Kathryn R Barush’s ‘Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience’, Material Religion, 18.3 (2022), 389-90. DOI 10.1080/17432200.2022.2082771 

Review of Sarai Katajala-Peltomaa et al. (eds.), ‘A Companion to Medieval Miracle Collections’, The Medieval Review, 22.04.09 (2022). 

‘Pilgrimage During Covid-19: Impacts, Adaptations, and Recovery’, International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, 10.1 (2022), article 16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21427/hjtc-4m56. Open access.  

Co-authored with Jaeyeon Choe O’Regan, ‘Why you might want to Consider a Pilgrimage for your Next Holiday’, The Conversation. 20/01/2022. 

‘Friends and Neighbours in High-Medieval England: A Hagiographical Perspective’, in The Experience of Neighbourhood in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Bronach Kane and Simon Sandall (London: Routledge, 2022), 175-88

‘Reconsidering the Medieval Experience at the Shrine in High-Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 47.2 (2021), 203-229. DOI 10.1080/03044181.2021.1895874

‘The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives’, Gender and History, 33.2 (2021), 427-47. DOI 10.1111/1468-0424.12519

‘The Problematic Pilgrim: Rethinking Margery’s Pilgrim Identity in “The Book of Margery Kempe”’, The Chaucer Review, 55.2 (2020), 171-96

‘The Troublesome Relic of a “Troublesome Priest”? Negotiating the Boundaries of Religion, History and Popular Culture in Anglican Canterbury’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 31.2 (2019), pp. 153-166

‘Gesta Pontificum Anglorum: History or Hagiography?’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury ed. Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017), pp. 13-26

‘Miracles and Madness: Dispelling Demons in Twelfth-Century Hagiography’, in Demons and Illness: Theory and Practice from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. Siam Bhayro and Catherine Rider (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 235-55

‘Miracle Children: Medieval Hagiography and Childhood Imperfection’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 47.3 (2016), 267-85

‘Beyond the Cloister: The Nuns of Lacock and their Wiltshire Estates’, Wiltshire Local History Forum, 88 (2016), 19-23

‘Anthropology, the Medievalist … and Richard III’, Reading Medieval Studies, 41 (2015), 27-51

‘Richard III: A Medieval Relic?’, History Today, 65.8 (2015), 11-17

‘Gendered Discourses of Time and Memory in the Cult and Hagiography of William of Norwich’, in Gender, Time and Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. Liz Cox and Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 111-26

‘Women Pilgrims and their Travelling Companions in Twelfth-Century England’, Viator, 46.1 (2015), 115-34

‘Peter Brown and Victor Turner Revisited: Anthropological Approaches to Latin Miracle Narratives in the Medieval West’, in Contextualizing Miracles, ed. Matthew Mesley and Louise E. Wilson (Oxford: Medium Ævum, 2014), pp. 17-39

 ‘“The Rich and The Poor, The Lesser and The Great.” Social Representations of Female Pilgrims in Medieval England’, Cultural and Social History, 11.1 (2014), 9-2

‘Modern and Medieval Approaches to Pilgrimage, Gender and Sacred Space’, History and Anthropology, 24.4 (2013), 493-512

‘Lamentation Motifs in Latin Hagiography’, Gender and History, 25.3 (2013), 529-44. Also published in Sex, Gender and the Sacred: Reconfiguring Religion in Gender History, ed. Joanna de Groot and Sue Morgan (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 135-49

 ‘Wives, Mothers and Widows on Pilgrimage: Categories of “Woman” Recorded at English Shrines in the High Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History, 39.2 (2013), 197-219

‘Representations of English Women and their Pilgrimages in Twelfth-Century Miracle Collections’, Assuming Gender, 3.1 (2013), 59-9

‘Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy: Women Pilgrims and their Journeys in Medieval   Miracle Narratives’, Gender and History, 24.2 (2012), 292-309