Lauren Urbont

PhD candidate in History

Stanford University

Supervisors: Professor Fiona Griffiths and Professor Rowan Dorin

“The topic of my research is devoted to the role of death and the dead in daily life in both Jewish and Christian communities in medieval Western Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. In particular, my interest lies in where the dead inhered in daily life, including through their presence lingering in material objects, dedications, ritual practices in the home, and cemetery visitation. My aim is to ascertain how the presence of the dead in daily life was mediated in legal sources, complemented by narrative and moral sources that sometimes deviated from legal standards. Ultimately, I would like to delineate the ways in which Jews and Christians participated in mutual norms and practices around the continued presence of the dead in the experience of the living, and in which particular ways the two traditions diverged.   

As a PhD student at Stanford, I am conducting my research under the supervision of Professor Fiona Griffiths and Professor Rowan Dorin in the Department of History. In the coming year, I am looking forward to the opportunity to join the research team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem headed by Professor Elisheva Baumgarten, Contending with Crises: The Jews in XIV^th Century Europe.  I am eager to learn from the collective knowledge and expertise of the group.”

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