Gale Owen-Crocker

She has lectured by invitation at universities in Canada, Italy, Taiwan and the USA. She has advised many museums on historical costume and is 'dress expert' to several archaeological units. She appeared in this role on BBC TV's 'Meet the Ancestors' and was recently interviewed for BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour. She is adviser on 'dress' words to the Toronto Old English Dictionary and wrote entries on 'Clothing' and 'Tapestry' for The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England and on 'Clothmaking' for a forthcoming encyclopaedia Women and Gender.

She is the Deputy Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, and directed the 2006 MANCASS international Easter conference 'Royal Authority: kingship and power in Anglo-Saxon England'.

Specific research interests:

Gale R. Owen-Crocker is an Anglo-Saxon specialist who enjoys interdisciplinary research, which uses, for example, archaeological evidence to illuminate Old English literature; and art, archaeology, glosses and text (both Latin and English) to explore the issue of Anglo-Saxon dress.

She is the co-founder and co-editor of the international journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Her recent books include King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (2005); Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: revised and enlarged edition (2004), The Four Funerals in Beowulf: and the structure of the poem (2000), Medieval Art: recent perspectives (1998) and Anglo-Saxon Texts and Contexts (1998).

Current research projects:

As Co-Director of the Manchester Medieval Textiles Project she is currently preparing for publication An Annotated Bibliography of Medieval Textiles of the British Isles c.450-1100, and is also editing Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, a book particularly aimed at the graduate student and young scholar. She has published articles on Beowulf, on Old English poetry, on Anglo-Saxon textiles and a series of papers on the Bayeux Tapestry (12 at the last count) which combine her interests in medieval textile and medieval narrative; she is writing a book The Design of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Research Project

In 2006 Professor Owen-Crocker was awarded £765,576 for a 5-year Research Project The lexis of cloth and clothing in Britain c. 700-1450: origins, identification, contexts and change by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The Project will produce a database of termonology from all the medieval languages of the British Isles: Old and Middle English, Old Irish, Welsh and other Celtic languages, Anglo-Norse, Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Latin and will be illustrated with maps, drawings and photographs.

Professor Owen-Crocker is Director of the Project in association with Dr Cordelia Warr cordelia.warr@manchester.ac.uk and Dr Louise Sylvester louise.sylvester@uce.ac.uk

The Project will employ two post doctoral Research Assistants, one each at Manchester and UCE BIrmingham, a part time Administrative Assistant, and two part time technical staff. It will fund consultancies on Old Irish and Old Welsh and the services of an artist/cartographer.

In addition the AHRC is funding a PhD in Art History associated with the Project.

The Project begins on 6 November 2006.

• The Birmingham-based Research Assistant is Dr Mark Chambers.
• The Manchester-based Administrative Assistant is Brian Schneider
• The PhD student is Pamela Walker

Supervision areas:

She has recently supervised successful PhDs on 'Nature symbolism in Old English poetry: Paradise, Hell and Doomsday', 'Feasting and fasting: food and drink in the social relations of Anglo-Saxon England' and 'Old English mod in the context of religious change: a semantic study based on selected texts'and has shared sucessful supervisions on 'Irish medieval textile implements' and 'The Old English Lacnunga: a rhetorical study'.

She is currently supervising PhDs on The Design of Anglo-Saxon Manuscript Art, The Rhetoric of the Old English Exeter Book,  The Application of Prognostics in Old English Texts, Anglo-Saxon Virginity and Maternity, The Old English Wonders of the East and Anglo-Saxon Glass. Doctoral students are encouraged to publish articles and one PhD student is publishing a book from her MPhil thesis. 

Additional academic activities:

Professor Owen-Crocker is a regular attender at the International Medieval Congresses held annually in Leeds and Kalamazoo, Michigan, as well as the biennial International Society of Anglo-Saxonists conferences and likes to see her graduate students coming along to read papers! She is the co-founder of DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics and Fashion) an organization which exists to sponsor conference sessions on medieval dress and textiles. (E-mail to join the mailing list.)