Katherine Travers

Katherine Travers is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Italian within the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick. Their research centers on medieval Italian and Occitan literatures, with a focus on lyric poetry, gender, and the construction of the literary self. Previously, they held a postdoctoral fellowship at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, and completed their PhD at New York University (NYU), where they also taught alongside positions at Durham University.

Their research interests include the history of gender and sexuality, Dante, Petrarch, medieval book cultures, and the political dimensions of literary expression. They are currently completing a book on gender in medieval Italian poetry books and developing a new project titled Fantasies of Empire in Medieval Italy, which explores imperial imagery and its relationship to identity and belonging in the late-thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, under the mentorship of Dr. Bryan Brazeau.

Their recent publications reveal a strong interdisciplinary approach, combining philology, literary theory, and feminist critique. Themes across their work include medieval plurilingualism, the ethics of interpretation, and the role of manuscript culture in shaping literary subjectivity. They also serve as an Assistant Editor for the journal gender/sexuality/italy.

Scientific Awards:

• Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship

They welcome graduate inquiries in their areas of expertise. Though not currently teaching, they remain actively engaged in research and scholarly communication. Their work bridges medieval studies, gender theory, and political thought, contributing significantly to contemporary understandings of premodern literary cultures.