To say I am utterly delighted is an understatement.

I’ve just heard that my journal article ‘Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Gossip, Insults and Violence in 16th-century France’ in French History (Vol 25, No. 4), has been awarded a US prize for historical scholarship – the Nancy Lyman Roelker Prize.

The Roelker Prize is awarded by the Sixteenth Century Society every year for the best article in English on sixteenth-century French history. It will be formally presented at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio in October.

The article was written for a special edition of French History in honour of the historian Robin Briggs, my doctoral supervisor and inspiration. I don’t know who nominated my article – but I am very grateful to him or her!

You can read the full text of my article here at French History if you subscribe or here in its pre-print form.

The article was also featured in BBC History Magazine in April 2012 (see below). I am now writing a book on my research on sixteenth-century France.