Annabel Hancock
Leave to Supplicate Granted: February 2025
DPhil Research Topic
I'm a historian of trust, trade, movement, identity, and documentary cultures in the Medieval Mediterranean. As well as being interested in the ways in which culture, identity, and religion affected human interaction and trust formation, I also work in digital humanities, exploring how digital methods, such as network analysis and database building and analysis, can expand and enhance historical research.
I conducted my DPhil research at St John’s College under the supervision of Professor Ian Forrest and Professor Julia Smith and was co-funded by the OOC AHRC DTP, St John’s College, and the Clarendon Fund. I am also proud to have been elected a Beeston Scholar for Research Excellence at St John’s College (2021-23).
My DPhil thesis explored the formation of trust between groups of merchants and investors in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca in the 13th to 14th centuries. This stems from an interest in how and why group identities were formed, the ways in which groups reacted to ‘others’, and how trust/distrust was constructed and maintained within and between identity groups (including religion, gender, and citizenship). By focusing on sources related to long-distance traders in the Crown of Aragon, I developed a framework for studying trust in the past. I am now working to convert my DPhil thesis into a monograph.
My postdoctoral research explores the ways in which enslavement and slave trading interacted with trust formation, looking to understand the economic and social impacts of slavery and enslaved individuals in medieval Catalonia, 1200-1400.
I gained a BA in History from Oriel College in 2018 and an MA in Medieval Studies in 2019 at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, funded by the centre’s Anniversary Scholarship. I spent part of the 2025-26 academic year as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Department of History, University of Maryland.
An important part of my research and historical development is working with various languages. I am currently working with documents and scholarship in Latin, Catalan, Spanish, and Arabic.
I was Lecturer in Medieval History at Oriel College for two years, 2022-2024, and acted as a Graduate Outreach Tutor for the History Faculty for three years, 2020-2023. As part of this role, I delivered an outreach presentation titled 'Trust between traders in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, 1240-1350' as part of the Historia Lectures and wrote an outreach article on 'Medieval Mediterranean Communities and Movement 1150-1350'.
I was a lead organiser of the interdisciplinary conference ‘Trust in the Premodern World’, which took place in the History Faculty, 13-14th January 2023. Reports on the conference for OMS and the Past and Present Society.
I was also co-organiser of the workshop 'Scales of Governance: Local Agency and Political Authority in Eurasia, 1000-1500', which took place in Worcester College, 12-13th January 2024. Report on the workshop for OMS.
Publications:
Hancock, Annabel Laura, and Ian Forrest (eds), Trust and Mistrust in Premodern Europe and the Mediterranean, (ARC Humanities Press), October 2025. https://www.arc-humanities.org/9781802702842/trust-and-mistrust-in-premodern-europe-and-the-mediterranean/
Hancock, Annabel Laura, “The Relativity of Fides: Faith Language, Commerce and Interreligious Trust in the Crown of Aragon, c. 1240–1350,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, published online (July 2025): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440125100273.
Hancock, A.L., “Tracing Connections: Using Network Analysis to Study Trade and Movement in the Mediterranean in the Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries,” Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38:4, (December 2023), 1536-1563: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqad056
Hancock, J.T., D. Veal, and A.L. Hancock, “Network theory and the resilience of redox signaling.” Reactive Oxygen Species, 8:23, (2019): 245-257.
Media engagement:
Interview on 'Les dones i els dies', Catalunya radio: La monarquia pot ser feminista? - https://www.ccma.cat/catradio/alacarta/les-dones-i-els-dies/pot-ser-la-m...
