Dr Rowena E Archer is an Emeritus fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and former director of Medieval Studies for the University of Cambridge’s International Summer Programme.  During her time as a lecturer in Oxford’s Faculty of History at Brasenose and Christ Church, her research focused on the late medieval English Nobility and the experiences of women in this period.  

Dr Archer has published on a wide variety of aspects of women’s lives making considerable use of the late fourteenth century Franco-Italian writer Christine de Pizan (d.1431). She is currently writing a life of Alice Chaucer, the poet’s granddaughter (d.1475). She continues to do some teaching on the late Middle Ages and in particular on Joan of Arc (born in Lorraine) and her age, 1419 – 1435. During her directorship of the long running Medieval Studies Programme for Cambridge’s International Summer Programme, she regularly taught at Madingley Hall.  

She travels to France at least twice a year, partly for work and partly for pleasure.