Affiliated Research Scholars

Elma Brenner

Research interests

The history of leprosy, hospitals and charity in medieval Western Europe, focusing on the city of Rouen, France. Elma is investigating the broader medical, social, religious and cultural ramifications of these topics in a Wellcome Trust-funded project on 'Leprosy and Society in Rouen, c.1100–c.1500'. She is also interested in the issues of gender, memory and responses to death in medieval Europe. She is working on a book provisionally titled Leprosy and Charity in Medieval Rouen. In addition, she is co-editing two essay collections: Memory, Commemoration and Medieval Europe (with Dr Meredith Cohen, University of Leeds, and Dr Mary Franklin-Brown, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) and Society and Culture in a Medieval City: Rouen 989–1300 (with Dr Leonie Hicks, University of Southampton).

Recent publications

• Brenner, E. 'The leper house of Mont-aux-Malades, Rouen, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (with annexes by Bruno Tabuteau)', in B. Tabuteau (ed.) Étude des lépreux et des léproseries au Moyen Âge dans le nord de la France: Histoire – Archéologie – Patrimoine, Histoire Médiévale et Archéologie, 20 (2007), 219–246
• Brenner, E. Review of R. L. Winer, Women, Wealth, and Community in Perpignan, c.1250–1300: Christians, Jews, and Enslaved Muslims in a Medieval Mediterranean Town, in Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 21:3 (2009), 331–333