Tom Licence

M.A. History; University of Cambridge (2002)

M.Phil. Medieval History; University of Cambridge (2003)

Ph.D. History; University of Cambridge (2006)

Tom Licence attended Westcliff High School for Boys grammar school in Essex and took his degrees at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating with a double starred first. Funded by the AHRC through his postgraduate studies, he was elected to a Research Fellowship at Magdalene in 2006, before being appointed Lecturer in Medieval History at UEA in 2009, and Senior Lecturer in 2013. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Dr Licence specializes in the period 950-1200, with interests in religious history, historical writing, and the Norman Conquest. He has published on topics ranging from episcopal politics to the Knights Templar and Hospitaller, Cistercian spirituality, saints' cults, historical writing, and the role of hermits and recluses in society. He edits and translates Latin hagiography, and is currently working on a new biography of Edward the Confessor commissioned for the acclaimed series Yale English Monarchs. An additional interest takes him into the world of Victorian waste and consumption, which he is also researching at present.

Books:

What the Victorians Threw Away (Oxbow, 2015)

(Ed.) Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Miracles of St Edmund, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 2014).

(Ed.) Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 2014). 

Hermits and Recluses in English Society 950-1200 (Oxford, 2011).

Articles and chapters:

Robert of Jumiéges, Archbishop in Exile (1052-55), Anglo-Saxon England 42 (2013), 311-29.

'Herbert Losinga's Trip to Rome and the Bishopric of Bury St Edmunds', Anglo-Norman Studies 34 (2012), 151-68.

'Religious Devotion in the Diocese, 900-1200', in Walsingham, Richeldis 950: Pilgrimage and History (Walsingham, 2012), 29-45.

‘Public Spectacle’, a chapter in A Social History of England, 900-1200, ed. Elizabeth van Houts and Julia Crick (Cambridge, 2011).

‘History and Hagiography in the Late Eleventh Century: the Life and Work of Herman the Archdeacon, Monk of Bury St Edmunds’, English Historical Review 124 (2009), 1-29.

‘The Norwich Narrative and the East Anglian Bishopric’, Norfolk Archaeology 45 (2007), 198-204.

‘Evidence of Recluses in Eleventh-Century England’, Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), 221-34.

‘Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the Hagiography of St Eadwold of Cerne’, Journal of Medieval Latin 16 (2007), 182-207.

‘Military Orders as Monastic Orders’, Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East Journal, Crusades Vol. 5 (2006), 39-53.

‘The Origins of the Monastic Communities of St Benedict at Holme and Bury St Edmunds’, Revue bénédictine 116 (2006), 42-61.

‘The Life and Miracles of Godric of Throckenholt’, Analecta Bollandiana 124 (2006), 15-43.

‘The Templars and the Hospitallers, Christ and the Saints’, Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East Journal, Crusades Vol. 4 (2005), 39-57.

‘Suneman and Wulfric: Two Forgotten Saints of St Benedict’s Abbey at Holme in Norfolk’, Analecta Bollandiana 122 (2004), 361-72.

‘The Gift of Seeing Demons in Early Cistercian Spirituality’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 39 (2004), 49-65.

‘The Benedictines, the Cistercians and the Acquisition of a Hermitage in Twelfth-Century Durham’, Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003), 315-29.

Anglo-Saxon England

Anglo-Norman England

Ecclesiastical History

Latin Texts

Director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies

Senior Adviser