Dr Helen Gittos
BA, MSt, DPhil, FSA
Stipendiary Lecturer
I studied English Literature at Newcastle University and then came to Oxford as a graduate student. I taught at the University of Kent for ten years before returning to Oxford to take up my current post. I am Associate Professor of Early Medieval History and Director of the Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland.
I teach History of the British Isles 1 and 2, Approaches: Archaeology, the Further Subject in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology of the Early Christian period, and also contribute to the teaching of the Disciplines. I regularly supervise undergraduate dissertations on a range of medieval topics.
I am interested in how the past challenges our preconceptions and helps us to imagine how differently the world can be experienced and understood.
Current projects include a book that takes a fresh look at how the English converted to Christianity in the early middle ages and another on the use of English in the liturgy from before the Reformation, from c. 700-c.1550AD. I have long been interested in places and the evidence for past people in the landscape and I am working with Hugh Willmott and Michael Shapland to better understand the landscape context of the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset.
Much of my work has been on the history of the church and its rituals in the Middle Ages, especially using liturgical sources as a rich vein of evidence for many aspects of the social, cultural and religious history of the early Middle Ages. My first book was Liturgy, Architecture and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England ; I have also co-edited two collections of essays on the topic: The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (2005) and Understanding Medieval Liturgy (2015). A second strand of my research is about language. I’ve written about the use of Old English in liturgical contexts and also on the audience for Old English texts.
https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-helen-gittos
Books
Liturgy, Architecture and Sacred Places in England (Oxford Uni Press, 2013, Pb 2015)
Edited Books
Vernacular Languages in the Long Ninth Century, ed. with Alban Gautier, Journal of Medieval History double Special Issue 47. 4-5 (2021)
Understanding Medieval Liturgy: Essays in Interpretation, ed. with Sarah Hamilton (Ashgate, 2016, Pb 2019)
The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. with M. B. Bedingfield, Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 5 (2005)
Article and Book Chapters
‘Churches’ and ‘Architectural Features’, Art, Image, Power and Place: The Stone Sculpture of Anglo-Saxon England in Context, ed. S. Semple, J. Hawkes, R. Cramp (Oxbow Books, forthcoming 2026)
‘Sutton Hoo and Syria: The Anglo-Saxons who served in the Byzantine Army?’ English Historical Review (2024)
‘The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context’, with T. Morcom, Speculum (2023)
‘Archaeological Evidence for Local Liturgical Practices: The Lead Plaques from Bury St Edmunds’, Crossing Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Art, Material Culture, Language and Literature of the Early Medieval World, ed. E. Cambridge & J. Hawkes (Oxbow Books, 2017), pp. 127-138.
‘The Audience for Old English texts: Ælfric, Rhetoric and ‘the edification of the simple’, Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014), pp. 231-66.
‘Sources for the Liturgy of Canterbury Cathedral in the Central Middle Ages’, Art and Architecture at Canterbury Cathedral, ed. A. Bovey, (British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 35 (London, 2013), pp. 41-58
‘Christian Sacred Spaces and Places’, The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, ed. H. Hammerow, D. Hinton, S. Crawford (Oxford: OUP, 2011), pp. 824-43.
‘Is there Any Evidence for the Liturgy of Parish Churches in Late Anglo-Saxon England? The Red Book of Darley and the Status of Old English’, Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, ed. F. Tinti, Anglo-Saxon Studies 6 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), pp. 63–82.
‘Architecture and Liturgy in England c. 1000: Problems and Possibilities’, The White Mantle of Churches: Architecture, Liturgy and Art Around the Millennium, ed. N. Hiscock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 91-106.
‘Resting in peace: churchyard consecration and sacred spaces in Anglo-Saxon England’, Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. A. Reynolds & S. Lucy (London: Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2002), pp. 195-208.