Dr. Meredith Bacola

Meredith Bacola joined the Jesuit Centre for Catholic Studies as an Assistant Professor in 2018. Her research centres upon the social and cultural history of early Medieval Europe, with a specific concentration on the cult of saints in the British Isles.

She began her academic journey in an interdisciplinary Medieval Studies program at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and her curiosity led her abroad to explore remote hermitages and cathedral shrines for M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Medieval History from the University of Durham, England. Her doctoral thesis, examining how interest in the hermit St Guthlac and his sister St Pega developed (ca. 800 – ca. 1300), inspires her to consider new intersections between saints, their guardian communities, and landscapes.

Currently, she is utilizing GIS technologies as part of a University of Manitoba Research Grant to better plot changes to monastic estates in the Fens. She also employs these approaches within upper-level courses on sanctity, pilgrimage, and the experiential travel study courses that she has led to Ireland (2015) and Italy (2019).