Miss Lizzie Williams

I am a PhD researcher in the History of Art, specialising in medieval manuscript culture and visual historiography. I previously completed an MSt in Medieval Studies at the University of Oxford and hold a First-Class BA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art.

My doctoral research adopts a comparative approach to the visual historiography and marginalia of Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora and Historia Anglorum, with a particular focus on omission as a historiographical and visual strategy. It examines how practices of visual storytelling, selective absence, reader interaction, and material design contribute to the construction of historical knowledge. My work combines palaeographical and codicological analysis with approaches from art history and sensory history. I also have experience in manuscript cataloguing, numismatics, museum education, and public engagement.

Research interests:

• Matthew Paris and St Albans historiography

• Visual historiography and medieval historical thought

• Marginalia, annotation, and reader interaction

• Codicology and manuscript production

• Medieval visual storytelling and diagrammatic practices

• Sensory history and embodied reading

• Sacred space and the materiality of devotion