Lauren Urbont
PhD candidate in History
Stanford University
Supervisors: Professor Fiona Griffiths and Professor Rowan Dorin
Continue reading Researcher of the Week“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.