Jerome Gasson

I completed my BA in history at Girton College, Cambridge in 2020, with the dissertation topic of hairstyles in twelfth-century Britain. I then moved to Magdalene college for an MPhil in medieval history, focusing on fourteenth-century laws regulating diet (2021).

My doctoral research looks at agriculture and accounts, using the Clare estate in the fourteenth century as a case study. This work highlights how practices at the audit shaped farming strategies on medieval estates, in terms of how farm managers interacted with markets, what risks they took over cropping strategies and livestock numbers, and how they were rewarded for their work. There is an fascinating story to be told about conflict and corruption in and behind medieval accounts which economic historians have tended to downplay, but has important implications for how the relationships between agriculture, towns and the environment is understood.