Dr Johanna Dale
Research Fellow in Medieval History
Johanna Dale is a Research Fellow in Medieval History. She is a cultural historian, predominantly working on England and German-speaking lands in the Middles Ages. She is interested in cultural change and exchange across time and space, with a focus on the role of liturgy in society and politics. She is also interested in landscapes, both real and imagined, and the connections between past and present in landscapes today.
Johanna joined the department in 2016 as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and is currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Liturgical and literary landscapes: the cult of St Oswald of Northumbria in the German-speaking world. (grant ref: AH/X003841/1).
Major Publications
- Liturgy, Literature and History: Oswald of Northumbria and the Cult of Saints in the Middle Ages (Liverpool University Press, 2025)
- St Peter-on-the-Wall: Landscape and Heritage on the Essex Coast (UCL Press, 2023)
- ‘Liturgical Landscapes in Post-Conquest England: Commemorating King Oswald in the Northern Province’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2020)
- Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century: Male and Female Accession Rituals in England, France and the Empire (Boydell & Brewer, 2019)
Public Engagement
Johanna regularly engages the public with her research, as well as collaborating with communities local to where she lives in Essex to help support medieval heritage in the area. She has worked with community groups and the town council in Maldon to develop a walking route and to enhance the environment around the ruins of the chapel of the former medieval hospital for people suffering from leprosy and has engaged with numerous stakeholders to produce a collection of essays on the seventh-century chapel at Bradwell-on-Sea, which would be impacted by plans for a new nuclear power station in the vicinity.
Public engagement is at the heart of Johanna’s current project on the afterlife of Oswald of Northumbria in German-speaking regions. In collaboration with Sarah Bowden (of King’s College London) and creative practitioners, Johanna has developed a digital animation for primary-school children, which is currently being translated into German as part of a resource park to support the teaching of German at KS3 level. She has also been involved in workshops with secondary schools and is in the process of commissioning a new musical piece inspired by medieval Oswald legends, which will be the centrepiece of a programme to engage communities in the many places where Oswald was important in the Middle Ages.
Contact information
Email: johanna.dale@ucl.ac.uk
Project website: Oswald of Northumbria
External roles
Trustee, Victoria County History of Essex
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Qualifications
PhD University of East Anglia, 2013