Dr Jessica Berenbeim

Jessica Berenbeim is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of English and a Fellow of Jesus College.

Academic interests

The aesthetics and materiality of writing; medieval art and architecture; archives and archival theory; the cultural history of medieval Britain.

The central theme of my research is the role of visual culture in documentation, historical knowledge, and political power. I teach for the medieval literature papers in Part I and Part II, and on visual and material culture more broadly in Part II.

My teaching and supervision interests include: interdisciplinary medieval studies; material texts; the intersections of literary and visual culture; history and theory of museums, libraries, and archives.

Biography

I’m from the USA (BA, PhD Harvard), and I first came to the UK to study here in Cambridge for the MPhil. I was a Junior Research Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and I’ve also held fellowships at or collaborated with a number of cultural institutions, including the British Library, the British Museum, and the National Archives.