Joanne is a cultural and intellectual historian of medicine and the occult in the period c. 1200–c. 1700. She was born and brought up in West Wales, and spent most of her childhood in the small towns of Cilgerran and Fishguard, in Pembrokeshire. Her home county is a place with a rich premodern history. Pembroke Castle was the site of the birth of the future Henry VII in 1457, and a significant two-month siege in 1648. Further north, Cilgwyn holds the origin of some of the stones that would end up forming Stonehenge. Nevern houses both Pentre Ifan’s ancient dolmen and the reconstructed Castell Henllys iron age village. And St Davids, one of the UK’s smallest cities, is the home of a beautiful cathedral church and ruined Bishop’s Palace. She spent many a happy weekend scrambling around these historic landscapes, absorbed in the process of immersing herself in a different world.
It almost seems inevitable she would become a historian, but not before a diversion into music. She spent her teens and early twenties playing in a variety of orchestras and bands, before doing her foundation certificate in Modern History at Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education, and then her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in history at the University of London.
Joanne is represented by Fabienne Schwizer at Ki. She lives in south London.
Photo by Sorana Santos
