Professor Julie Barrau

Julie is an Official Fellow, Director of Studies in History, and one of the Auditors of the College Accounts. She is University Senior Lecturer in Medieval British History at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of History.

Biography

I read history at the École Normale Supérieure and at Paris-Sorbonne University. I started to work on 12th-century England for my MA dissertation and continued in this area for my PhD. After a year spent at Trinity College on a Knox scholarship, I was a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College between 2006 and 2009. In 2009 I became Lecturer in medieval history at the University of East Anglia. I came back to Cambridge in 2013 to take up a University Lectureship in Medieval British History. I am also back at Emmanuel College as a Fellow.

Teaching

I lecture for Paper 3, Paper 8 and Paper 15, and contribute to the MPhil in Medieval History. My current Special Subject is about the Angevin Empire. I am also the convenor for the Themes and Sources option on Royal and Princely Courts. I am happy to supervise for Papers 3, 8, 14 and 15.

Research

My doctoral research focused on the uses medieval clerics made of the Bible in their social life, and aimed to understand better the status and power given to those men by their scriptural knowledge. More broadly I am interested in the social and political role of high knowledge in medieval societies. I have for instance worked on Latin as a spoken language, especially in the trilingual context of Plantagenet England. Current research interests include the varied ways educated people could familiarise themselves with the Bible and its meaning, the political legacy of Thomas Becket in the later Middle Ages, and the letter-collection of Herbert of Bosham, who was a biblical scholar and the closest advisor of Becket during his exile in France.