Where am I now?

So where am I now with regards to research? What has changed?

Current topics

• The history of personal hygiene in the wider Middle Ages
• Medievalism and the modern perception of the Medieval period
• Rosaries
• The source of the concept of the filthy Middle Ages

Future (near and distant)
This covers areas which interest me, but which either I don't have the time or skill (yet?) to research, or which I am looking into incidentally to other research

• National and social insults - "Filthy viking marauders", "effete Italians", "impassive Germans" and so on...
• Links between Muscovy/Rus and the British Isles - mostly interested in the elite and trading links
• The Varangarians
• Women's roles in borderlands - especially looking at the Welsh Marches, how women interacted across the borders in times of peace and war, cross border relationships etc.
• The daughters of Yaroslav the Wise.
• The place and role of women in medieval court life.
• Pre-modern Royal ladies-in-waiting - who were they, what did they actually do, what happened to them once their mistresses moved on, either through marriage, political deposition of their husband, or death?
• Women in Russian folklore - Rusalka, Baba Yaga, Vasilissa Prekrasnaia - roles, actions and importance
• Folklore and historicity, e.g. Continuing from my BA thesis and looking at the links between Russian folklore and real historical periods (i.e. Do folk tales represent an era, an idealised era, etc.)

Some posts will be a short series outlining my thinking on each of these. My intention is that these will serve as indexes to thinking each subject, although I will use tags for indexing as well (The Librarian in me goes deep ;D)