Victoria Flood

My research explores the relationship between place and text, and cross-border transmission and translation, with a particular focus on legendary, political content; alongside applications of legendary medieval content in contemporary digital heritage interpretations.

My first monograph, Prophecy, Politics, and Place in Medieval England: From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Thomas of Erceldoune (D. S. Brewer, 2016), charts the development of a dominant secular tradition of political prophecy in medieval England, beginning with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini. I have also co-edited two volumes on medieval translation and cross-border transmission: Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe series 30, Brepols, 2019), with Aisling Byrne, an output of the Crossing Borders network; and Cultural Translations in Medieval Romance (Studies in Medieval Romance, D. S. Brewer, forthcoming 2021), with Megan G. Leitch.

My second monograph is forthcoming with Manchester University Press. Fantastic Histories: Fairies and the Limits of Wonder explores the relationship between medieval historiography and romance, and changing medieval concepts of fiction and fantasy, in political applications of legends of the supernatural (fairy or demon) mother. The project begins with the Welsh fairy narratives of Gerald of Wales and Walter Map, and ends with the French and English Mélusine romances. 

I am delighted to be PI on Invisible Worlds (2020-22), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as an Early Career Standard Grant. The project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Birmingham, the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and the University of Lincoln. Invisible Worlds explores the relationship between historical and contemporary acts of story-telling and place-making associated with Alderley Edge in Cheshire, now a National Trust site. It traces the legends associated with the Edge and the network of mines beneath its surface, and frames a new intervention in the representation of the site’s invisible history through a publicly participatory Augmented Reality resource and a remote access resource. The project's monograph, Invisible Worlds: Place-making, Augmented Reality, and Alderley Edge, co-authored with Catherine A. M. Clarke and Andrew B. R. Elliott, is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press.

I joined the English Department in September 2016, following an Early Career Leverhulme award held at Durham University (transferred to Birmingham for 2016-17), and an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship in the department of Celtic Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg (2014-15).

My doctorate was undertaken at the Centre for Medieval Studies, at the University of York (completed in 2013). This followed an MPhil in Medieval Literature, and a BA in English, from the University of Cambridge.