Joanne’s PhD focused on the history of name-number divination in late medieval and early modern manuscripts of British provenance. After this, she worked for four years as Assistant Editor on the Casebooks Project (2014–18), which involved transcribing Richard Napier’s astrological casebooks, written in a notoriously slovenly hand.
Since her time on Casebooks, she has worked across a variety of academic roles in medieval and early modern history: as Latin Manuscripts Cataloguer and Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Manchester (2018–21), as Postdoctoral Research Associate on Alice Thornton’s Books (2021–24) at the University of Edinburgh and, most recently, Senior Research Associate at the University of Portsmouth, transcribing early modern letters, and Associate Lecturer in Early Modern History at Goldsmiths.
As well as an article (2014) and book chapter (2021) based on sections of her PhD, she has a reflections article on Magic and Witchcraft studies forthcoming in the English Historical Review, on invite from the editors. She also has a chapter in a forthcoming volume (2026) she is co-editing with Cordelia Beattie and Suzanne Trill on Alice Thornton (1626–1707), on ‘Thornton, Illness and the Body’. Finally, Joanne is preparing a chapter on Thornton and traumatic illness for the proceedings of the Writing the Self in Pain, 1400–1800 conference, held at the University of Helsinki in October 2024.
She has written for the public, for example, on the pitfalls of retrospective medical diagnosis in general, and a follow-up focusing on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a condition from which she suffers. She has appeared on podcasts, for example Glitch Bottle, where she talked about the differences (or lack thereof) between ‘religion’, ‘magic’ and ‘science’ in the Middle Ages and the importance of seeing the past in its own context, rather than applying anachronistic, modern ways of thinking to these topics.
In 2024, Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain, the monograph based on Joanne’s thesis was published by Boydell and Brewer. She is currently working on a new book entitled Everyday Bewitchment.
