Is medieval history an oversaturated field? Looking for advice as a Post-Grad student.

by No-Plenty8409

I'm currently looking at prospective PhD places for research around the politics of the royal courts of Plantagenet England, and I've recently been feeling really down about just how saturated the academia already is. It seems just about everything has been picked apart and written about at such length that I could never come up with a single original thought or useful piece of analysis.

It might just be burnout and imposter syndrome talking after 8-odd years of continuous study and research, but I'm really feeling like there's nothing I can say about Medieval England that hasn't already been thoroughly gone over time and time again.

Is the field just too saturated for anything new? Should I look elsewhere? Or is this something that every historian feels at some point?

GP_uniquenamefail

Having recently been awarded my PhD in Early Modern history, I cannot speak in detail about medieval history at the PhD level. However, my MRes was in medieval history, as well as my undergrad thesis. I understand and can relate to feelings and concerns of both 'burnout' and 'imposter syndrome' but it might be worth asking yourself a few questions first.

  1. Why do you want to do a PhD? A PhD is a deeply personal amount of gruelling hard graft, particularly self-funded, with extremely low chances of employment in your PhD field at the end of it.
  2. If the answer to #1 is something like "for me" or "because I love the period", you don't have to do a PhD in order to continue studying it - there are multiple and varied ways to continue engaging with the topic you love.
  3. The fact you want to look at 'the politics of the royal courts of Plantagenet England' but struggling to find an aspect of it that is new, could be connected to #1 and #2. However, although your PhD has to be new and unique, it can be quite specific in how it does that. Perhaps you disagree with all that has gone before, or are revisiting work with a different lens of study? Those are still new and unique approaches to the topic
  4. As yourself, what is it ABOUT 'the politics of the royal courts of Plantagenet England' that you find so interesting. If its the 'politics of the royal courts' then can it be in a different time/place to Plantagenet England? If it is about politics in courts in Plantagenet England, can it be something tangentially connected to them? The politics of ecclesiastical courts and their relations to royal power in the reign of John Lackhand? The difference in court politics in the realms of the Angevin empire? etc etc.
  5. What strides can you make NOW, tangibly, that could strengthen your application to such a PhD if you find it? For looking at sources of your period - how is your Latin? Your French? Your Palaeography? How is your wider contextual knowledge? Working on these could help you in your applications, or even in tackling that Plantagenet research itch.
  6. Is where you are located feasible for such a study - if not UK-based, then what primary source material is available to you online or in your country? Maybe a quick scoping study to test the viability of tackling this or a connected topic? This would not be time wasted as your eventual application would need this.

I know some of these questions may have been obvious, but working through them when you are a in a bit of a spiral from the 'crap, can I do this?' can sometimes help bring a problem into focus.

  1. [A joke one] Join us in the Early Modern Period. We have the enlightenment, schismatic religious warfare, the end of the Wars of the Roses, The Hapsburgs, (Charles V!) and the whole Tudor/Stuart/Hannover thang, as well as SOOOO many King Louis' *waggles eyebrows* and less Latin sources....what more could you want for court politics?