Born in London, Elizabeth L’Estrange is passionate about the history of art and Medieval history. After studying the history of art at the University of Leeds, she benefited from the European Erasmus programme and touched down in Liège in 1996, where for one year she followed courses in the history of art, the history of music and English literature. There followed a return to Leeds, to the Centre for Medieval Studies, where she completed her education with a Masters in Medieval Studies. During her doctoral studies, from 1999 to 2003 at the University of Leeds School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, she discovered a passion for the study of fifteenth century art in northern Europe (manuscripts, books of hours, etc.) from a multidisciplinary perspective. In 2004, her thesis in the bag, she returned once again to Liège and Leuven to work on books of hours, thanks to a post-doctoral studies grant she obtained from London’s Leverhulme Trust. Today she is a FRS-FRNS researcher in historical sciences, still at the same university, and attends many conferences on her subject of predilection. She is also active in the association which gathers together foreign researchers working in Belgium (www.foreignacademics.be ).

The author of numerous academic articles in specialist journals, she this year publishes her first book, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty, and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages, which received the 2010 price of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship for a first book in this particular domain.

Publications

L'ESTRANGE E., Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty, and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages, Manchester University Press, 2008.

L'ESTRANGE E._‘“Quand femme enfante…”: remèdes et charmes pour l’accouchement au Moyen Âge’_, in Femmes en Fleurs: Santé, Sexualité et Génération du Moyen Âge aux Lumières, Presse Universitaire de St-Étienne, forthcoming, 2008

L'ESTRANGE E.‘_Sainte Anne et le mécénat d’Anne de France’_, in Patronnes et mécènes en France à la Renaissance, Presse Universitaire de St-Étienne, 2007, pp. 135-154

L'ESTRANGE E.‘_Le mécénat d’Anne de Bretagne’_, in Patronnes et mécènes en France à la Renaissance, Presse Universitaire de St-Étienne, 2007, pp. 169-94

L'ESTRANGE E., ‘Images de maternité sainte dans deux livres appartenant aux duchesses de Bretagne’, in Livres et lectures des femmes: Entre moyen âge et renaissance, Turnhout: Brepols, 2008, pp. 35-47.