Natasha Symes

I am a DPhil student in History at Balliol College, Oxford, supervised by Dr Helen Gittos. My research, generously funded by the OOC AHRC DTP and Clarendon Fund, explores Anglo-Saxon ship culture in both its material and imaginative dimensions.

Ships in early medieval England were more than just vessels for trade and travel; they were powerful cultural symbols. My project analyses textual, archaeological and iconographic sources to explore the place of ships in Anglo-Saxon society. I also wish to ask why, despite how integral ships were to their way of life, the Anglo-Saxons are not remembered as a seafaring people. Particular areas of interest include riverine travel and the social fabric of ship-building.

I work closely with the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company in Suffolk, where I contribute both to research and to the hands-on reconstruction of the 7th-century ship excavated at Sutton Hoo. This project offers unique insight into the processes and communities behind ship construction which I hope to integrate into my own research.

Before coming to Oxford, I read Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge at BA and MPhil level. My earlier research ranged from early modern receptions of medieval Scandinavian texts to representations of gender and identity in a Latin account of the Anglo-Saxon outlaw Hereward ‘the Wake’.