Meg Leja specializes in the cultural, political, and intellectual history of late antique and medieval Europe. Her research interests range widely across gender history, religious studies, reception and manuscript studies, and the history of science. Her first book, Embodying the Soul: Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022, winner of the Ecclesiastical History Society’s first-book award), explores changing perceptions of the body and the value of medical knowledge in the early medieval period. Leja has also published work on masculinity during the Carolingian civil war and out-of-body experiences in the visionary literature of the early Middle Ages. She is part of the Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine (CEMLM), a British Academy-funded project cataloging all Latin medical material from the first millennium. Some of her other current projects include medieval legal conceptions of necessity and exemption; Jewish doctors in late antiquity; understandings of medical regimen across the Mediterranean; and functions of spice and flavoring in early medieval constructions of identity. Leja has held fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wolf Humanities Center, Binghamton’s IASH, and Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion. She is affiliated with the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the TAE in Material and Visual Worlds. Leja teaches survey courses on early medieval Europe and pre-modern medicine, as well as a variety of thematic courses on healthcare and gender, death and disease, religion and culture in late antiquity, and the Carolingian Empire. Select Publications Embodying the Soul: Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe
Background
Education
Research Interests
Related News Stories