Staff profile

Overview and Research

I am Assistant Professor in the department, providing lecturing, seminar teaching and tutorials on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules. My primary research interest is in medieval and early Tudor drama, and especially interdisciplinary approaches to premodern performance history. I also have research interest in late medieval material culture (e.g. cloth and clothing) and late medieval language contact. 

My book on Performing Disability in Medieval and Early Modern Britain was published by ARC Humanities Press in the spring of 2024. This major study of performance history examines the nature and socialisation of 'disabled' performers in the medieval and early Tudor records. It takes a new approach to the study of the evidence for, and conceptualisation of 'impairment', as a performative act, in the premodern records and play texts. The study sheds new light on historic performance culture, reflecting on what that culture might tell us about the continued 'othering' of disability in society today. For more information, see the ARC Humanities website here. 

I am also co-editing (with Professor John McKinnell) the Records of Early English Drama series for County Durham. The first traunch of this substantial collection of records for performance in the county are due to be published by REED, Toronto within the next two years (https://ereed.library.utoronto.ca/). For more on this long-running international series, see https://reed.utoronto.ca/.

From, 2012-13, I was a Teaching Fellow at The University of Birmingham. I also acted as Research Consultant on the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project based at the University of Westminster, London, UK (http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk/index.html). I have also served as Research Assistant on a parallel, Leverhulme-funded project: the Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources Project, in collaboration with Professor Louise Sylvester and Professor Gale Owen-Crocker.

I have published widely on material culture and historical philology and continue conducting research on fashion and sumptuary legislation in the 14th through the 16th centuries, especially the lexicology of medieval fashion and dress.

Teaching

I provide lecturing, seminar and tutorial teaching, and mentoring on a number of undergraduate modules, including Intro to Drama, Romance and the Literature of Chivalry, Epic and the Literature of Legend, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Renaissance Literature, Medieval Literature, and Medieval French Literature, as well as on a number of postgraduate modules. From next year, I will be offering a new special-topic seminar on 'Stagecraft and Subversion in the Early English Drama'.

Previous to joining the Department at Durham in 2013, I provided lecturing and further teaching, primarily on medieval and Renaissance English language and literature, at the University of Durham (2001-2), Trinity College Dublin, the University of Westminster, and the University of Birmingham, as well as the distance learning MA at the University of Leicester. 

• Early English Drama
• Late-Medieval Language Contact
• Medieval Clothing and Fashion

Chapter in book

• Chambers, M. Staging Conversion: Preternatural Voices and Visions in the Medieval Drama. In H. Powell, & C. Saunders (Eds.), Visions and Voice-Hearing in Medieval and Early Modern Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan
• Chambers, M. ‘An Exotic Monster, a French Magician, and Scottish ministralli: Visiting Players in the Durham Records’. In D. Wyatt, & J. McKinnell (Eds.), Early Performers in the North-East of England: Continuity and Difference. ARC Humanities Press
• Chambers, M., & McKinnell, J. ‘Tradition Adapted: Boy Bishops in Medieval Durham’. In D. Wyatt, & J. McKinnell (Eds.), Early Performers in the North-East of England: Continuity and Difference. ARC Humanities Press
• Chambers, M., & Sylvester, L. Language Use in Manuscripts of the Royal Wardrobe and Petitions: Evidence for the Study of Dress and Textile Vocabulary’. In A. Edwards, & O. Da Rold (Eds.), English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 (262-279). British Library
• Chambers, M., & Ignacio, J. (in press). Byzantines in English Jesuit Drama: Performing Joseph Simons’s Leo the Armenian. In L. Hopkins, D. Bruster, M. Ögütcü, & A. Hussain (Eds.), Materializing the East in Early Modern English Drama (59-84). Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350300484.ch-003
• Chambers, M. (2024). ‘The Disabled Body as Performance: Disabled Performers in the Records of Early English Drama’. In M. Twycross, S. Carpenter, E. Dutton, & G. Kipling (Eds.), Medieval English Theatre 45 (102-125). Boydell & Brewer. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.11589157.9
• Chambers, M. (2017). ‘How Long is a Launce?: Units of measure for cloth in late medieval and Early Modern Britain’. In R. Netherton, & G. R. Owen-Crocker (Eds.), Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Boydell & Brewer
• Chambers, M. C., & Sylvester, L. M. (2012). 'Multilingualism in the Vocabulary of Dress and Textiles in Late Medieval Britain: Some issues for historical lexicology’. In I. Hegedűs, & A. Fodor (Eds.), English Historical Linguistics 2010. John Benjamins Publishing
• Chambers, M. (2012). 'brail’, ‘crakow’, ‘chronicles’, ‘gorget’, ‘handbooks’, ‘letters’, ‘medley’, ‘perse’, ‘surcoat’, etc. In G. Owen-Crocker, E. Coatsworth, & M. Hayward (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c. 450-1450. Brill Academic Publishers
• Chambers, M. (2011). "Hys surcote was ouert": The "Open Surcoat" in Late Medieval British Texts. In R. Netherton, & G. R. Owen-Crocker (Eds.), Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Boydell & Brewer
• Chambers, M. C., & Sylvester, L. M. (2010). ‘Redressing Medieval Dress with the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain Project’. In T. Hamling, & C. Richardson (Eds.), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (71-82). Ashgate Publishing
• Chambers, M. C., & Sylvester, L. M. (2010). ‘From apareil to warderobe: some Observations on Anglo-French in the Middle English Lexis of Cloth and Clothing’. In R. Ingham (Ed.), The Anglo-Norman Language and its Context (63-73). York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer
• Chambers, M. C. (2008). ‘“What is this, a betell, or a batowe, or a buskyn lacyd?”: Lexicological Confusion in Medieval Clothing Culture’. In J. E. D. Vera, & R. C. Rodríguez (Eds.), Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific and Technical Texts (55-74). Peter Lang
• Chambers, M. C., & Owen-Crocker, G. (2008). From Head to Hand to Arm: The Lexicological History of "Cuff". In R. Netherton, & G. R. Owen-Crocker (Eds.), Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Boydell & Brewer

Conference Paper

• Chambers, M. (2018, December). ‘Medieval Records for Early English Drama in Durham: Entertaining Town & Gown in the Palatinate’. Presented at 53rd Intl. Congress on Medieval Studies, University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo, MI
• Chambers, M. (2019, December). ‘Riding the Bounds of REED: Assessing the Evidence from Pre-Reformation Durham’. Presented at Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, Canada
• Chambers, M. (2018, December). ‘“Durhams old Cittie thus salutes our King”: Civic Performance and Royal Power in Post-Reformation Durham’. Presented at 18th annual Medieval English Theatre Conference, Sheffield, UK
• Chambers, M. (2012, December). Clothing by Name: Approaching the Study of Late Medieval Multilingualism through a Specific Technical Lexis. Presented at The Third International Conference 'Language, Culture, and Society in Russian/English Studies', School of Advanced Studies, London

Edited book

• Chambers, M. C., Sylvester, L. M., & Owen-Crocker, G. R. (Eds.). (2014). Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook. Boydell Press

Journal Article

• Chambers, M. (2020). “Wyth poynt of penaunce I schal hym prene”: Weaponised Conversion on the Medieval Stage. European Medieval Drama, 24, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.EMD.5.121758
• Chambers, M. (2020). 'Players' in Context: Determining Performance in Medieval Accountancy Records. Early Theatre, 23(2), 123-137. https://doi.org/10.12745/et.23.2
• Chambers, M. (2020). ‘Players’ in Context: Determining Performance in Medieval Accountancy Records. Early Theatre, 23(2), https://doi.org/10.12745/et.23.2.4383
• Chambers, M., & Jakovač, G. (2019). Welcoming James VI & I in the North-East: Civic Performance and Conflict in Durham and Newcastle
• Chambers, M. C. (2004). ‘Weapons of Conversion: Mankind and Medieval Stage Properties’
• Chambers, M. C. (2001). 'Physicality, Violence, and the Psychomachia in the Early English Morality Plays’