Helen Flatley

I am a medieval historian with a particular interest in interactions between Christian and Muslim societies in the medieval Mediterranean and Near East. I completed my DPhil in History at the University of Oxford and worked for several years as a Teaching Fellow in Islamic and Mediterranean History at Queen Mary University of London. In Oxford I currently teach a range of papers across the Faculties of History, Theology and Religion, and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and am a History Tutor for the Astrophoria Foundation Year programme

At Trinity, I am the Academic Support Tutor in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I can offer academic study skills support for students across different Humanities and Social Science courses, including help with all aspects of essay-writing, academic reading and note-taking, time management, exam technique, and revision strategies. I will usually be available in Trinity on Mondays and Fridays, but if you can’t find a time that suits you, please email me and we’ll find a slot!

My current book project, based on my DPhil research, examines the Mozarabs of Toledo, an ‘Arabised’ Christian minority living in Castilian society during a period of social, political and religious transition as Toledo passed from Muslim to Christian rule. The study mobilises a large collection of Arabic, Romance and Latin documents which reference social and economic interactions between the various religious and ethnic communities that inhabited the city, and challenge many of our assumptions about identity, belonging, and interreligious relations in the Iberian Peninsula. The project is indicative of my broader research interests, which focus on ‘bottom up’ social histories, and are aimed at unbuilding the rigid categories and frameworks that have often dominated our study of medieval Iberia and the broader Mediterranean world.