My own research focuses on popular violence in later medieval northern France. I work on the interconnections between different forms of violence, from tavern brawls to domestic violence to urban uprisings, and look at legal and cultural constructions of ‘deviance’, and the role of emotions in provoking outbursts of brutality. My other strand of research focuses on the misbehaviour of fifteenth-century students at the universities of Oxford, Paris and Heidelberg. Drawing on criminological models, my research examines the relationship between the negative stereotypes imposed upon students by a variety of commentators and observers, and the ways in which the students negotiated those stereotypes in their actual misbehaviour. The source material ranges from student poems and letters, to sermons and legal material.
