Dr Laura Varnam did her BA at Durham, her MA at Leeds, and her DPhil at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is the Lecturer in Old and Middle English at University College, Oxford. Her first book, The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture, was published by Manchester University Press in 2018.
Laura is an expert on The Book of Margery Kempe and in April 2018 she co-organised a landmark conference on The Book at University College, Oxford ('Margery Kempe Studies in the 21st Century') with Dr Laura Kalas (Swansea). With Laura Kalas, Laura Varnam is the co-founder of the Margery Kempe Society which supports and promotes the study and teaching of The Book of Margery Kempe and in 2021 Laura & Laura published a new volume of essays, Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe, for Manchester University Press. Laura is also a practicing poet and she is currently working on a creative-critical monograph on Margery Kempe in modern adaptation, using her own poetry as part of her mode of inquiry. (You can read some of the poetry here).
As a poet, Laura is also working on a poetry collection inspired by the women of Beowulf. Her sequence of poems 'Grendel's Mother Bites Back' won the Nine Arches Press 'Primers' competition in 2023 and was published in Primers Volume Seven in 2024. Links to published poems from the broader collection can be found here and a creative-critical article, including poems from the collection, was published in postmedieval in 2022.
In 2025, with Dr Kristen Haas Curtis & Dr Eleanor Baker, Laura co-founded the Guild of Medievalist Makers, an organisation for academic and academic-adjacent creatives and makers dedicated to furthering creative-critical practice in the humanities and making space for creative play. The Guild ran the workshop strand of the New Chaucer Society Congress in Freiburg in 2026, and in the academic year 2026-2027, Laura is running the John Fell Funded project 'Creating Medieval Criticism Now,' a network researching creative criticism and the Middle Ages. As part of this project she is running the Gender & Medieval Studies conference on 'Gender & Creativity' at University College in September 2026.
Laura is also an expert on the life and works of Daphne du Maurier and she is currently editing The Oxford Handbook of Daphne du Maurier for Oxford University Press. In 2024 she appeared on Radio 4's Open Book discussing du Maurier and in 2017 she was interviewed for the Arte documentary Daphne du Maurier: Sur les traces de Rebecca. Laura published an article in The Independent on the 80th anniversary of the publication of Rebecca in 2018 and in 2019 she published the first academic article on du Maurier's biography of Branwell Bronte (in the journal Bronte Studies). She was the expert guest on the literary podcast Backlisted, discussing du Maurier's short story collection The Breaking Point, and her expert interview essays on du Maurier are featured on the Five Books website (on Rebecca and on Du Maurier's other works). She wrote a new afterword to Rebecca which was published in a special edition of the novel by Suntup Press in 2025. In October 2026 she will be interviewing Daphne du Maurier's grandson at the Cheltenham Literary Festival about his new memoir Last Night I Dreamt.
Laura has been a regular guest on the podcast Backlisted, joining the team for Halloween episodes on Daphne du Maurier, Beowulf, Elizabeth Jane Howard, MR James, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Emily Brontë, and a special issue on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Website: here
Books:
The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture (Manchester University Press, 2018).
Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe (Manchester University Press, 2021).
Primers Volume Seven (Nine Arches Press, 2024)
Bluesky: @drlauravarnam Instagram: @drlauravarnam
College website profile.
Old English, Middle English, Medievalism, Linguistics, Fantasy Literature, Daphne du Maurier.
I have supervised undergraduate dissertations on hostile space in Old English literature; the Exeter Book riddles; women in domestic space in Middle English literature; queer Chaucer; the Gawain-poet; the women mystics of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114; the gothic, place, and regionalism, in the works of Daphne du Maurier; Angela Carter's medievalism; and the 'Chocolat' novels of Joanne Harris. I have supervised MSt dissertations on medieval carols, Christ's body and affective piety, the Virgin Mary in the N-Town plays,The Book of Margery Kempe, and on gender and place in the works of Daphne du Maurier.
The Book of Margery Kempe; sacred space, church architecture, material culture, lay religion, pastoral care, Lollardy; Daphne du Maurier; the Brontes; twentieth century women writers; fairy tale, fantasy literature, Harry Potter, twenty-first century diverse fantasy; medievalism; creative criticism; modern poetry, Beowulf.
