Dr Catherine Jenkinson

Research Associate, (Hi)stories of Violence: Myth-Making, Imprisonment and the Cultural Identity of the Tower of London

catherine.jenkinson@history.ox.ac.uk

I grew up in rural Kansas before studying Classics at Columbia University in New York City. I later moved from Classics to History and completed a master's degree at the University of St Andrews. In 2024, I finished a DPhil in History at Lincoln College, Oxford.

I am interested in early modern European sites of power (especially, but not only, in the British Isles and the Low Countries) and the history of state violence, including incarceration, torture, and execution. In 2024-5, I was also the Research Associate on the Oxford John Fell-funded project (Hi)stories of Violence: Myth-Making, Imprisonment and the Cultural Identity of the Tower of London led by Dr Hannah Skoda. The project, a partnership between Oxford, Historic Royal Palaces, and the Royal Armouries, considered the Tower of London’s associations with violence across time. Previously, I was the researcher on the TORCH-funded Knowledge Exchange Fellowship project 'Torture and Execution at the Tower of London' (Principal Investigator: Professor Steven Gunn) to create a research toolkit to help inform curatorial plans for the redevelopment of interpretative displays related to the history of torture at the Tower.