Kate Hammond

Kate HammondContact: chrh@st-andrews.ac.uk

I am originally from York, and came to St Andrews as an undergraduate. I stayed on for the Mediaeval History MLitt, which in turn persuaded me to stay on for a PhD, which I began in September 2009. 

After an undergraduate dissertation on King Stephen and family politics sparked my interest, I am now engaged on a study of family conflict and dynastic strife in Normandy c. 1025 to 1135 from a political and legal perspective. Focuses of my PhD include views of family conflict and ideals of familial loyalty; political conflict within the ducal family, and particularly the impact of 1066; familial strife within the aristocratic ranks, and its relation to wider political disorder; and conflict within families as manifested in disputed monastic patronage, often focused on the flashpoint of death and succession. I am using a variety of sources in the thesis – chronicles, charters, legal coutumiers and literary texts. My wider interests, distilled in my thesis, include the role of personal bonds in political society; ideas of civil war; and disputed inheritance and succession, linked to inherent difficulties of resource allocation between and within generations.

Thesis

Family conflict in ducal Normandy, c. 1025-1135'
Supervisor: Professor John Hudson

Academic Papers

  • ‘Brother shedding the blood of brother’: Orderic Vitalis’ representation of the Anglo-Norman fraternal conflict of 1106, at Imbas, National University of Ireland Galway, November 2010, and at ‘Conflict in History’ Symposium, University of Edinburgh, May 2011.
  • ‘Rightly punished for the crime of his brother’s murder’: Norman legal treatment of violence within the family, at Law, Violence and Social Bonds, c. 900-1250, University of St Andrews, June 2011.
  • Consent to grants of land in Normandy, at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2011.
  • Family conflict manifested in disputed monastic patronage: recent work, at the International Medieval Society of Paris, January 2012.
  • ‘Utterly degenerated from the good will of their sires’: family conflict in disputed monastic patronage, at Law and Disputing in the Middle Ages, University of Copenhagen, May 2012, and at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2012.
  • The position of the ducal heir in eleventh-century Normandy, at the Society for the Study of French History annual conference, University of York, July 2012.
  • Orderic Vitalis and family, politics and conflict, at Orderic Vitalis: New Perspectives on the Historian and his World, University of Durham, April 2013
  • Questions of authority, legitimacy and heirship in the eleventh-century Norman ducal succession, at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2013


Publications

  • Kin conflict in eleventh and early twelfth-century Normandy, in (ed.) P. Andersen, K. Salonen, H. M. Sigh and H. Vogt, Law and Disputing in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the Ninth Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History 2012 (Copenhagen, 2013).  

Teaching

ME 2003: Europe in the High Middle Ages

Other

Co-organiser of Law, Violence and Social Bonds, c. 900-1250, held at the University of St Andrews, 17-19 June 2011.
Co-organiser of the SAIMS postgraduate seminar series, 2011-2012.
Co-organisor of the Law, Violence and Social Bonds strand at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2012