Dr Hannah Lucas, Newnham

hal32@cam.ac.uk

Biographical Information

I am the Newby Trust Research Fellow at Newnham College, where I also act as a supervisor and postgraduate mentor.

I read English at Oxford for my BA, before migrating to Emmanuel College in Cambridge for my MPhil in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. My DPhil was also based at the University of Oxford, where my dissertation won the Swapna Dev Memorial Book Prize.

From October 2025, I will be a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Technical University Berlin, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Research Interests

My research lies the intersection of literary history, theology, philosophy, and the medical humanities—focused on contemplative texts and practices, and the relationship between the medieval and the modern. I am currently investigating attention in Middle English devotional texts, especially contemplative ways of reading and how they relate to modern discussions of textual practice.

My first monograph, Impossible Recovery: Julian of Norwich and the Phenomenology of Wellbeing, was published in January 2025 with Columbia University Press. The book brings the Julian of Norwich texts into dialogue with Heideggerian philosophy to investigate the intersection of wellbeing, illness, and revelation.

I am also the founder and co-convenor of the 'Contemplation: theory / practice' research network, formerly at CRASSH.

Selected Publications

Book-Length Publications

Alexander Da Costa and Hannah Lucas, eds., Richard Whitford's A Work for Householders for Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies: The Syon Abbey Editions Series (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming 2025)

Impossible Recovery: Julian of Norwich and the Phenomenology of Wellbeing (Columbia University Press, 2025)

Articles

'On Frustration: Reading Margery Kempe in the Classroom', New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession (forthcoming 2025)

'D. W. Winnicott, Julian of Norwich, and the Good-Enough Mother/Mystic', American Imago 81.3 (2024), DOI:10.1353/aim.2024.a940329

'Negative Capabilities: Investigating Apophasis in AI Text-to-Image Models', Religions (2023), DOI:10.3390/rel14060812

‘Passion and Melancholy: Julian of Norwich’s Medical Hermeneutic’, Review of English Studies (2020), DOI:10.1093/res/hgaa022

‘Private Pilgrimages at Syon Abbey? A Note on Cambridge University Library MS Ff.6.33’, Notes and Queries 66.2 (2019), 219-22

‘“Clad in flesch and blood”: The Sartorial Body and Female Self-Fashioning in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 45.1 (2019), 29-60

‘Locating More: The Dialogical Gardenscapes of Thomas More and Ellis Heywood’s Il Moro’, Moreana 53.205-6 (2016), 179-96

Public Writing

'Recovery Without End: Insights from a Medieval Mystic?', Columbia University Press Blog (2025).

'Reflections on the Contemplation: theory / practice Research Network', CRASSH Blog (2024)