Ruth Nugent

Ruth is an archaeologist specialising in various mortuary cultures in England since the 5th century AD to the modern day, especially in churches, cathedrals, and (proto-)Christian contexts. She completed her BA at the University of Chester, and then an MPhil in early Anglo-Saxon methods of handling the dead. Her doctoral thesis focused on the role of touch in the mortuaryscapes of English cathedrals from the 7th to 21st centuries, and was part of The Past in its Place research project. Since then, she has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Chester, University of Exeter, and Lancaster University on projects including new technologies for recording and ‘reading’ graffiti on church tombs, the depiction of bodies in and around major English saint’s shrines in art, texts, and artefacts, and creating a scholarly network to compile the first digital gazetteer of early medieval churches in Britain and Ireland (ECCLES project). She also previously worked as an editorial assistant for The Archaeological Journal as well as teaching a wide range of archaeology and history modules at the University of Chester from 2011-2018, and as a guest lecturer in archaeology at the University of Manchester.