Areas of expertise: medieval history; history of emotions; legal history; Middle English literature; gender and sexuality; medievalism; love.
Email: Clare.Davidson@acu.edu.au
Location: ACU Melbourne Campus
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9581-3618
Clare Davidson is a research fellow in medievalism in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. She is an interdisciplinary cultural and legal historian of late medieval and early modern Europe, specialising in literature, emotion, gender, and institutions. Her research also shows the role of historical and critical reception in the British Empire and how narratives about the past continue to impact modern Australian laws and related discourse. Her monograph Love in Late Medieval England (contracted with Manchester University Press) explains vernacular concepts of loue, desire, and sexuality in fourteenth-century England while more broadly analysing the historical reception of medieval love. She is editor of The Global Middle Ages, the third volume of A Cultural History of Gender (Bloomsbury, 2025); co-editor with Professor Susan Broomhall of Queens, Queenship and Natural Resource Management in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1800 (Routledge, 2025); and co-editor with Dr Jessica Lake, a 2025 special issue of History Australia focused on gender and law in Australia and New Zealand. She is currently researching the relationship between historical narrative, emotions, property law, and corporations, as well as the recognition and function of rights and obligations over time.
Co-editor with Susan Broomhall, Queens, Queenship and Natural Resource Management in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1800 (New York: Routledge, 2025).
With Arlie Loughnan, “Australia,” in Jenny Earle and Katy Swaine Williams, eds. Making self-defence accessible to victims of domestic abuse who use force against their abuser: Learning from reforms in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. United Kingdom: Centre for Women’s Justice (2023).
2019 ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions Honorary Research Fellowship.