Karen Smyth

Identity, place and culture in medieval and early modern East Anglian texts; critical and practice-led heritage studies; producing creative adaptations of the premodern; Health Humanities. 

Major publications include the monograph Imaginings of Time in Lydgate and Hoccleve's Verse (Ashgate, 2011), a co-edited book collection on Medieval Life Cycles (Brepols, 2013) with Isabelle Cochelin, a monograph on Exploring Identities Through Autoethnography (Routledge, 2025), and multimodal creative outputs on the 15th to 17th century Paston letters (2021-25). Karen also publishes on pedagogy.

As Director of 'Paston Footprints', Karen co-produces digital, health and creative interventions that reshape heritage storytelling and curation in East Anglia. This work promotes CivicUEA and CreativeUEA agendas, with the first-ever multi-sector partnership programme for Paston heritage, involving over sixty regional and national partners. This includes the Norfolk Record Office, Norfolk Museum Services, Diocese of Norwich, Collisions Theatre (Dir. Holly Maples) and the Paston Heritage Society. Co-productions include ten Creative Health Heritage Walks | Paston Footprints, and an interactive research community portal: This Is Paston: Welcome to the World of the Pastons. Karen's current focus is on diversifying sensory, embodied and cognitive storytelling methods with non-traditional heritage users.

This builds on her previous research on the connections of medieval place with community storytelling in collaborative cross-disciplinary AHRC funded projects including 'Preserving Place: Cultural Mapping' with the social geographer Andrew Power (Southampton) and 'All our Stories', with UEA's landscape historians Sarah Spooner and Jon Gregory. Previously, Karen had over a decade's experience in co-productions with Norfolk communities focusing on Medieval East Anglian figures such as William Cunningham, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, John Lydgate and medieval drama. 

Now an Honorary Associate Professor of Literature, Karen joined UEA almost two decades ago as a Lecturer in Medieval Literature. Karen has received multiple awards and prizes for her research impact, been profiled by RCUK for her research with public engagement, has served on heritage industry boards and the AHRC peer review college, and acted as consultant and mentor for many national projects. She has extensive experience of working with the media on East Anglian heritage news and with the national media on medieval literary history, including writing educational guides for television programmes. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Royal Society of Arts, and Higher Education Academy. Karen was formerly a Lecturer in Old and Middle English at the University of Nottingham, held a visiting research fellowship at the University of Harvard (Barker Center, USA), a Medieval Academy grant at the State University of New York (Binghamton, USA), was Lecturer in Literature with the Open University, and a tutor in medieval and early modern studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast.