Artistic License

artistic license logo

Our Writers

Francesca is a freelance writer and aspiring author whose writing career began when she co-produced her own magazine, Tippex, with her friend in secondary school. Since then she has helped to found Durham’s first university-wide feminism society, completed a MSt in Medieval studies at Oxford, and worked for a diverse range of clients including an environmental thinktank, a careers magazine and a business publication for Eastern Europe. Other adventures have included spending a summer teaching English in China and crossing Russia by train in the depths of a Siberian winter. She has a passion for feminism, academia and all things Viking-related. You can catch her for a chat at the Rusty Bicycle pub in Cowley, where she works part-time.

Over summer 2017, many academics in the Humanities Division found their research interrupted by a knock on the door from Bethany White. Bethany is a DPhil student in the Faculty of History and Trinity College, and she was given artistic license to roam the various departments in the Humanities Division and write a series of articles on some of the most exciting and unusual research going on.

The results are thrilling - keep your eyes peeled for her article about medical remedies in medieval England. Did you know that medieval doctors recommended applying heated eight-day old urine to your face to cure acne? If you didn’t, please don’t now try it at home. She has also written a series of profiles about students in the humanities doing interesting things – from the student balancing literature lectures with running a campaign to help refugees, to the aspiring historian helping her classmates to fight procrastination.

“I learnt more than I imagined I would - about graffiti, bilingualism, Qawwali music, medieval medicine and so much more,” says Bethany. “It struck me just how much research is being done in Humanities, and what a range and depth there is. It was exciting to think that this is all going on at once, and that you can learn so much from a quick chat with anyone in Oxford.”

Find out More about Bethany White