Dr Juliana Dresvina
Research Fellow, Tutor for Academic Skills Development
Dr Dresvina is a medievalist and cultural historian whose work combines history, literary criticism, theology, and psychology. She teaches interdisciplinary courses on cultural history, literature, and art, as well as study skills courses for both graduate and visiting students. Julie’s current research explores how people use faith-based writing — creative, devotional, non-fiction, and self-narrative — as a form of therapeutic practice. She is also interested in how human-shaped spaces of spiritual significance, along with religious material objects, function therapeutically: from devotional manuscripts and misericord carvings to rock sanctuaries, holy wells, and thermal springs.
Research Interests
- Devotional texts, objects, and spaces as therapeutic practices
(from manuscripts and carvings to natural sacred landscapes) - History of emotions and memory
with a focus on self-narratives, embodiment, and religious meaning-making - Faith, literature, and fantasy
medieval to modern, including Tolkien, Lewis, and contemporary re-imaginings - Manuscript studies, codicology, and the material history of books
- Intersections of theology, psychology, and cultural history
including attachment theory (DMM) and narrative transformation - Academic skills, study-support pedagogy, and mentoring
Selected Publications
- Attachment and God in Medieval England: Focusing on the Figure (Brill, 2021)
https://brill.com/display/title/59314 - A Maid with a Dragon: The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch in Medieval England
(Oxford University Press / British Academy, 2016)
https://academic.oup.com/book/3918 - Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies: An Introduction
(co-editor; University of Wales Press, 2020)
https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/cognitive-sciences-and-medieval-studies/ - “Thanks for Typing”: Remembering Forgotten Women in History
(editor; Bloomsbury, 2021)
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/thanks-for-typing-9781350150058/ - Selected chapters and articles on medieval emotion, religious narrative and imagery, manuscript culture, and fantasy literature.
Contact Information
juliana.dresvina@history.ox.ac.uk