Ryan Mealiffe

Research Topic

"Sea, Land, and Sky: Following the Birds of the Medieval East Atlantic 800–1400"

My doctoral research focuses on the entangled lives of migratory birds who once lived with and visited localities and communities during their travels along the corridors of the East Atlantic Flyway. My approach is inherently interdisciplinary, developed with more-than-human perspectives, connections, agencies, and capacities in mind, the implications of which alter what the medieval world looks like at a fundamental level. Taking an avian lens, my research challenges human periodization, imagined boundaries of nation and culture, and anthropocentric narratives, instead applying a zoomorphic lens to medieval societies.

Before starting my DPhil, I completed a BA in History and Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 2022 and an MPhil in Medieval History at Oxford (Wolfson College) in 2024. I previously worked in archaeological collections at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

My research is generously funded by the Clarendon Fund in partnership with the Wolfson College Norman Hargreaves-Mawdsley Clarendon Award and the Oxford Humanities Division.

Affiliations: Convenor of the Environmental History Working Group (EHWG); Member of the TORCH Environmental Humanities Postgraduate Committee; Associated Researcher at the Unearthing Multispecies Intellectual History: Earthing Trajectories of Area Studies (UMHI-ETAS) experimental research network; President of the 2025 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference Committee. 

Supervisor: Amanda Power