Staff profile

Heidi Stoner's research is primarily focused on Early Medieval material culture of the Insular world. Her doctoral thesis was undertaken at the University of York and focused on Anglo-Saxon kingship and how it is signified through material culture in the visual traditions. She is particularly interested in iconography, historiography, monumental art and its use in the early Christian landscape.

Her current research project is a three-year Early Career Fellowship sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust entitled Sculpture in the Early Medieval Irish Sea c. 800-c.1000: Interlacing Traditions. This project explores the cultural significance of the early medieval stone sculptures produced in the Irish Sea Regions of Britain and Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries. It challenges prevalent assumptions about state formation and national and ethnic exceptionalism as it has developed in Britain and Ireland, instead investigating their function as symbols of secular, religious and economic power within a culturally connected area. This will allow a nuanced narrative of cultural contact between the areas of ancient and modern northern Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man which will give greater understanding of the shared materiality in this region.

• Anglo-Saxon art and culture
• Early Christian Art and Architecture
• Early Medieval Architecture and Sculpture
• Iconography
• Insular Church Foundations
• Insular Manuscripts
• Late Antiquity
• Manx Sculpture
• Material Culture
• The Early Church in the North Atlantic
• Viking-age Christianity
• Visual Culture

Chapter in book

• Stoner, H. (2019). The Problem of Man: Carved from the Same Stone. In M. Boulton, & M. D. Bintley (Eds.), Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes (143-166). Boydell & Brewer
• Stoner, H. (2018). Heaven and Hall: Space and Place in Anglo-Saxon England. In M. Boulton, J. Hawkes, & H. Stoner (Eds.), Place and Space in the Medieval World (159-177). Routlege
• Stoner, H. (2017). The Fiercest of Kings Warriors at the Edge of Empire. In C. Newman, M. Mannion, & F. Gavin (Eds.), Islands in a global context Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Insular Art (207-214). Four Courts Press
• Stoner, H. (2015). The Architecture of a Life: an Iconography of Architectural Images in Oxford University College MS 165. In M. Boulton, M. Herman, & J. Hawkes (Eds.), The art, literature and material culture of the medieval world (217-231). Four Courts Press
• Stoner, H. (2015). Kings Without Faces: an Examination of the Visual Evidence for Kingship in the Seventh Century. In A. Gnasso, E. E. Intagliata, T. J. MacMaster, & B. N. Morris (Eds.), The Long Seventh Century: Continuity and Discontinuity in an Age of Transition (19-37). Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0686-6/10

Edited book

• Boulton, M., Hawkes, J., & Stoner, H. (Eds.). (2018). Place and Space in the Medieval World. Routlege