Professor Elisabeth van Houts

Elisabeth is one of our Life Fellows, and at the University she is Emeritus Honorary Professor of European Medieval History in the Faculty of History.

Biography

Elisabeth was born and brought up in the Netherlands where, after a teacher–training course she studied Medieval History and Medieval Latin at the University of Groningen. She received her doctorate there in 1982. With a post–doctoral grant funded by the Dutch Scientific Research Council she came to Cambridge, where in 1985 she became a Junior Research Fellow at Girton College. After a teaching stint of seven years at Newham College, where she was also Fellow Archivist and Tutor, she came as a College Lecturer to Emmanuel College, a position she held for twenty–five years alongside side being a Tutor. In 2001 she received a higher doctorate (LittD) from the University of Cambridge, and in 2011 became an Honorary Professor in European Medieval History. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2024. In January 2025 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow by the Medieval Academy of America.

Research

Her scholarly interests range from Anglo–Continental relations in the Middle Ages to the history of medieval memorial traditions, and of women and gender. Her most recent monograph Married Life in the Middle Ages 900–1300 was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Her co–edited book The Literature and History of Anglo–Dutch Relations, Medieval to Modern came out in the Proceedings of the British Academy, as volume 264 (2024). She is currently writing a biography of Empress Matilda (1102–67) for the Yale English Monarch series.