Tara Athanasiou

Supervisors

Prof. Alexandra Sanmark, Prof. Stefan Brink, and Dr Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Nasjonalbiblioteket 

Research Title

Place, Space and Mobility – Female Networks in the Viking Age and Early Medieval Period

Research Abstract

Tara’s PhD research is centred around gendered space and mobility in the Viking Age and early medieval period. Her thesis will examine how female mobility was enacted across the full spectrum of physical space, from within the ‘home’ itself, the community and district through to movement over significant geographical space. It will also examine mobility that involved contact with non-Scandinavian polities and cultures, both those in close geographical proximity to the Norse, such as the Sámi, as well as those separated from Scandinavia by significant geographical distance. Her research examines the different types of mobility in which women participated, comparing this to male mobility and analysing how this reflected the social construction of space and place within the Viking Age and early medieval period. Although mobility is experienced at an individual level and at a macro-level it is part of broad societal trends, the ability to be mobile, the factors that trigger it and the way that it is culturally viewed and individually experienced are dependent on the social groups to which individual actors belonged. The ability of a person to leverage and be supported by social networks (whether kinship, friendship, political, economic or religious) and the social and cultural capital that person has within the group underpins their ability to be mobile as much as the economic means to enact movement. This research will therefore examine the groups and networks that women belonged tom, how these both enabled and inhibited their mobility and how they operated within and experienced different spaces and places. It will also examine the concept of agency in mobility and migration.

Biography

Tara undertook her BA degree in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and returned to further education, after some years, as a part-time student at the University of the Highlands and Islands’ (UHI) Institute for Northern Studies. She was awarded the MLitt Viking Studies with Distinction in 2020 and is currently a PhD student at UHI.

Tara’s MLitt research focused on gender in the Viking Age and early medieval period. Her dissertation examined gendered identities in the Viking Age diasporic island hubs of Orkney and the Isle of Man and was awarded the Best Dissertation Award 2020 by the Institute for Northern Studies. She is now developing her research around the themes of gender, mobility and migration in her PhD studies at UHI.

Contact email address 17018480@uhi.ac.uk