Dr Erin Thomas Dailey

I am a historian who researches the greater Mediterranean world during the late Roman Empire and its early medieval successors (250-950). I am currently the Principal Investigator for an ERC-Consolidator Grant exploring 'Domestic Slavery and Sexual Exploitation in the Households of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, from Constantine to c. AD 900 / AH 287' (Grant agreement No. 101001429). More information on this research can be found on the project's website: DoSSEproject.com.

My research began with the late and post-Roman West. I have subsequently expanded my horizons to include the whole of the greater Mediterranean world.

DoSSE Project

I am the Principal Investigator for a 60-month research project, funded through a €2m grant from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101001429):

Domestic Slavery and Sexual Exploitation in the Households of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, from Constantine to c. AD 900 / AH 287

The project (DoSSE) brings together a team of researchers to investigate the sexual exploitation of people enslaved within the households of the greater Mediterranean world. This research project will reconstruct the motivations and justifications behind the sexual exploitation of domestic slaves, identify how the lived experience in the household shaped the content of our sources, reveal how a common Roman inheritance impacted later practices, and map the similarities and differences in Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities in the region. The result will significantly advance how scholars understands the transformation of the late Roman world.

For more information about the project, please visit DoSSEproject.com 

 

Monographs

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., Daniel Alford, Tali Artman, James R. Burns, Sheida Heydarishovir, Justin Pigott, Sofia Puchkova, Household Slavery and Bodily Vulnerability in Late Antique and Early Medieval Societies (forthcoming)

• 2023 Dailey, E.T., Radegund: The Trials and Triumphs of a Merovingian Queen, Women in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

• 2015 Dailey, E.T., Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, Mnemosyne Supplements: Late Antique Literature, 381 (Leiden: Brill)

Edited Volumes

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., Daniel Alford, Tali Artman, James R. Burns, Sheida Heydarishovir, Justin Pigott, Sofia Puchkova, eds, Sex and Slavery in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, forthcoming)

• 2026 Brooks Hedstrom, Darlene, and E.T. Dailey, eds, Late Antique Monasticism: An Archaeological and Historical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

• 2024 Raffensperger, Christian, and E.T. Dailey, eds, Portraits of Medieval Europe, 800–1400 (London: Routledge)

• 2014 Werronen, Stephen, and E.T. Dailey, eds, Monastic Space through Time, Bulletin of International Research, 19 (Leeds: Institute for Medieval Studies)

Journal Articles

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., ‘Eunuchs for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven: Self-Castration, the Early Church, and the Gospel of Matthew’ (in draft)

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., ‘Making Slaves in the Bedroom, Making Society in the Household: Sexual Vulnerability and Sexual Desire in Late Antiquity’, Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series (in draft)

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., ‘Clerical Authorities, Roman Law, and Hagar’s Son: Paternal Non-Recognition and the Children of Free Men and Slave Women in the Late Roman and Early Medieval World’, Journal of Medieval History, submitted

• 2027 Dailey, E.T, and Justin Pigott, ‘Ascetics, Slaves, and Necessity in Late Antiquity: Renouncing All Wealth, But for a Single Slave’, Early Medieval Europe, submitted

• 2026 Dailey, E.T., ‘Caesarius of Arles, Sexual Morality, and Household Slaves: The Vulnerability of Proximity’, Medieval People: Social Bonds, Kinship, and Networks, accepted

• 2015 Dailey, E.T., ‘To Choose One Easter from Three: Oswiu’s Decision and the Northumbrian Synod of 664’, Peritia: The Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland, 26: 47–64

• 2014 Dailey, E.T., ‘Confinement and Exclusion in the Monasteries of Sixth-Century Gaul’, Early Medieval Europe, 22.3: 304–335

• 2014 Dailey, E.T., ‘Gregory of Tours, Fredegund, and the Paternity of Chlothar II: Strategies of Legitimation in the Merovingian Kingdoms’, Journal of Late Antiquity, 7.1: 3–27

• 2010 Dailey, E.T., ‘The Vita Gergorii and Ethnogenesis in Anglo-Saxon Britain’, Northern History, 47: 195–207

• 2009 Dailey, E.T., ‘Reappraising the Synod of Whitby’, History Studies, 10: 31–44

• 2005 Dailey, E.T., ‘Roman Culture in the Medieval British Isles’, Perpetua, original series, 9: 1–14

Chapters in Edited Volumes

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., and Katherine Cross, ‘Nourished by the Breasts of the Same Nurses: Collactanei and Milk-Siblinghood in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, in The Medieval World: Kin and Kinship, volume 3: Sibling Interaction: Collaboration and Conflict, ed. Nathan Leidholm (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming)

• 2027 Dailey, E.T., ‘Monastic Secluded Spaces in the Late Antique West’, in Late Antique Monasticism: An Archaeological and Historical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

• 2026 Dailey, E.T., ‘Gender and Sexuality in Late Antiquity’, in The Oxford History of the Roman World, volume 11: Late Antiquity, ed. Noel Lenski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, at press)

• 2026 Dailey, E.T., ‘The Sexual Vulnerability of Non-Adult Slaves in the Late Roman West, AD 300–550’, in Children at Work in the Late Ancient World, ed. Christian Laes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, at press)

• 2026 Dailey, E.T., ‘Gregory of Tours and Chlothild’, in Transforming the Early Medieval World: Studies in Honour of Ian N. Wood, ed. N. Kıvılcım Tavuz and Richard Broome (Leeds: Kismet Press, forthcoming)

• 2024 Dailey, E.T., ‘Theutberga: Reflections on the Divorce of King Lothar II’, in Portraits of Medieval Europe, 800–1400, ed. Christian Raffensperger and E.T. Dailey (London: Routledge), pp. 39–49

• 2022 Dailey, E.T., ‘The Horizons of Gregory of Tours’, in Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe, ed. Christian Raffensperger (London: Routledge), pp. 17–37

• 2014 Dailey, E.T., ‘Introducing Monastic Space: The Early Years, 250–750’, in Monastic Space through Time, ed. Steven Werronen and E.T. Dailey, Bulletin of International Medieval Research, 19 (Leeds: Institute for Medieval Studies), pp. 5–25

• 2012 Dailey, E.T., ‘Misremembering St Radegund’s Foundation of Saine-Croix in Poitiers’, in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrativ Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Hartwin Brandt, Benjamin Pohl, W. Maurice Sprague, and Lina K. Hörl (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press), pp. 117–140

Reviews

• 2026 Dailey, E.T., Review of St Radegunde of Poitiers’ Treatise of Consolation to Lepers: Text, Translation, and Contextual Introduction, ed. and trans by Chris D. Synodinos. The Medieval Review, forthcoming

• 2026 Dailey, E.T., Review of Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint, by Isabel Moreira. The Journal of Religious History, Literature, and Culture, forthcoming

• 2023 Dailey, E.T., Review of Neighbours and Strangers: Local Societies in Early Medieval Europe, by Bernhard Zeller and others. Medieval Archaeology, 67.1: 227–228

• 2019 Dailey, E.T., Review of The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, by Geraldine Heng. The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, 5.1: 123–126

• 2017 Dailey, E.T., Review of Die Merowinger, by Sebastian Scholz. Francia-Recensio, 1: n.pp.

• 2017 Dailey, E.T., Review of A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. by Alexander Callander Murray. The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, 3.1: 132–134

• 2016 Dailey, E.T., Review of Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200, ed. by Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser. Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 28.3: 306–308

• 2016 Dailey, E.T., Review of Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World, ed. by Anthony Eastmond. Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 28.1: 87–89

• 2012 Dailey, E.T., Review of Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire, by Rachel Stone. German History, 30: 291–292

• 2010 Dailey, E.T., Review of Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Giselle de Nie, Karl F. Morrison, and Marco Mostert. International Medieval Research, 15–16: 103–105

Doctoral researchers:

• James Robert Burns, 'Slavery and the Households of Sixth-Century Gaul'
• Sheida Heydarishovir, 'Domestic Slavery & Islamic Conceptions of the Past'
• Muhammad Yousuf, 'Dietary Self-Denial and Gender in Early Islamic Sufism and Early Christian Monasticism'
• Jessica Hodgkinson, 'The Participation of Women in Book Culture in England and Francia'

Please contact me if you would like to discuss potential doctoral research projects under my supervision. I am very happy to discuss such projects with prospective researchers.