Alicia Smith is currently Lecturer in Medieval Literature and Culture at Birkbeck, University of London; she also teaches in Oxford and is the part-time Event Administrator at the Oxford Pastorate. In September 2025 she will take up a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has previously held research fellowships at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Alicia’s research deals with medieval religious literature and practice, and with the responsibilities and challenges of understanding that history today. Her doctoral thesis, in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford under Professor Annie Sutherland, examined the role of prayer in literature for, about, and by anchorites – solitary religious recluses – and how their prayer practices can inform our reading of and encounter with the past. Her current interest is focused on the early Christian saintly figure of Thais, sex worker turned recluse, and the various roles this contradictory saint played in medieval culture. This multifaceted project allows her, among other things, to ask how we can productively engage with ideas and practices from the past which are difficult, alien, and even offensive.