Dr Kathleen Thompson

My research interests have centred on the history of England and France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, beginning with the origins of the northern Frenchmen who followed William the Conqueror in 1066.  This led me into French history and the power structures that emerged from the disintegration of the Carolingian empire.  From there I turned to monastic history; in 2014 I published the first scholarly monograph on the Order of Tiron and in 2024 a translation of Hariulf’s Chronicon Centulense, which covers the abbey of Saint-Riquier in northern France from the sixth to the eleventh centuries.  I also work on local history, currently on the leper houses of medieval Bristol, and I am particularly interested in the history of East Bristol and Kingswood Chase.   

Publications

Monographs

Power and Border Lordship in medieval France: the County of the Perche, 1000-1217.  (Studies in History) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2002).

The monks of Tiron: a monastic community and religious reform in the twelfth century.  (Cambridge UP, 2014).

East of Bristol in the sixteenth century: documents from the manors of Barton Regis and Ridgeway (Bristol Record Society, vol. 68, 2016).

Hariulf’s History of St Riquier, translated by Kathleen Thompson (Manchester Medieval Sources series) (Manchester UP, 2024)

Edited works

Normandy and its neighbours, 900-1250: essays for David Bates, edited by David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson.  (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).

Joint editor of the Annual bulletin of historical literature (2004-10).