Millie Newis
Millicent-Rose Newis comes to PIMS from Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she studied for her BA, MPhil and PhD, and held posts as a Bye-Fellow and College Lecturer. Millie’s doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Professor Alex da Costa, explores experiences of solitary spiritual enclosure in the Middle Ages – particularly the challenges of the cell-bound life and how these were addressed in texts written for/by hermits, anchorites, and Carthusian monks, c.1080-1500. Her work has appeared in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, Medium Ævum and Leeds Medieval Studies, and in The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Women’s Writing in the Middle Ages.
At PIMS, Millie is working on the publication of her first monograph – an extension of her doctoral thesis, provisionally titled The Cell and the Soul: Enduring Spiritual Confinement in the Middle Ages. She is also making progress on a study of prosopopoeia (a figure of speech in which an absent person is represented as speaking) in anchoritic guides, and a chapter on ‘The Carthusian Conception of the Contemplative Life’ for the forthcoming Companion to the ‘Cloud’-Author (Boydell & Brewer).
In the winter term, Millie will be teaching a course, Medieval Mysticism, for the undergraduate Mediaeval Studies Program at the University of St Michael’s College, University of Toronto.
• 2025–2026, Mellon Fellow