Emily Gebhardt,

I am a historian of medieval politics, religion, and manuscript studies. My dissertation bridges political history, manuscript studies, and literary analysis, and offers a new framework for understanding power in late medieval England as a dynamic, locally negotiated process. Drawing on rare and often anonymous manuscripts, my work shows how different social groups like guilds, alchemists, and religious communities depicted the monarch’s body as an active site of political negotiation. My research additionally engages with medieval and early modern constructs and receptions of selfhood, identity, and the other.

I am currently in my sixth year of the History Ph.D. program at Duke University. For 2025-26, I was selected as the dissertation fellow representing Duke's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I have also recently served as Instructor of Record for a self-designed 200-level survey course in Medieval History, and as Graduate Team Manager for Bass Connections, Duke’s interdisciplinary research and education initiative.

2025, Duke’s CMRS Dissertation Fellowship Award
2024, Medieval Academy of America Centennial Grant for Vagantes Conference 2025
2024, Duke’s CMRS Summer Fellowship for Research and Travel
2024, Duke’s Graduate School Aleane Webb Dissertation Research Award
2024, Duke’s Graduate School Dissertation Research Award: Domestic
2023, Duke’s Graduate School Dissertation Research Award: International
2020, Duke’s CMRS Scholarship for Language and Palaeography
2018, Graduate Member of Golden Key International Honour Society
2017, Graduate Member of Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society

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Web Page:	https://sites.google.com/view/emilygebhardt/home

Keywords:

Archaeology, Medieval • Armor, Medieval • Calligraphy, Medieval • Ethics, Medieval • Fiction, Medieval • Fonts, Medieval • History, Medieval • Literature, Medieval • Manuscripts, Latin (Medieval and modern) • Marriage customs and rites, Medieval • Medieval • Military history, Medieval • Philosophy, Medieval • Sarcophagi, Medieval