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Ms Annabel Hancock

BA, MA

Ms Annabel Hancock previously studied for her BA in History at Oriel and her MA in Medieval Studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York.

Research Interests

Annabel’s research focuses on the formation of trust between groups of merchants and investors in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca in the 13th to 14th centuries. This stems from an interest in how and why group identities were formed, the ways in which groups reacted to ‘others’, and how trust/distrust was constructed and maintained within and between identity groups (including religion, gender, and citizenship). By focusing on sources related to long-distance traders and engaging with primary sources from a variety of language and identity groups, she plans to use developing approaches to historical trust and various theories about the formation of group solidarity to understand the ways in which groups express trust or distrust of each other as well as the ways in which governing structures influenced and maintained trusting behaviours.

An important part of Annabel’s research and historical development is therefore working with various languages. She is currently working with documents and scholarship in Latin, Catalan, Spanish, and Arabic. She also maintains an interest in digital humanities, exploring the uses of Network Science to study the past.

Selected Publications

Articles

Annabel Hancock, ‘Tracing connections: using network analysis to study trade and movement in the Mediterranean in the 11th to 14th centuries’, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Volume 38, Issue 4, December 2023, pp. 1536–1563, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqad056