Research Interests
Carl Watkins carries out research into religious culture in the later middle ages and is especially interested in beliefs about, and conceptualisations of, the supernatural in this period. His work encompasses the methodological problems of studying medieval religion, 'high' theological change and 'popular' beliefs about the afterlife and ghosts, angels and demons, miracles and divine signs. He has written about concepts of sinfulness and the emergence of purgatory, has completed a book for Cambridge University Press which explores beliefs about the supernatural in a medieval English context and has, more recently, explored beliefs about the dead during the middle ages (and beyond) in a wider-ranging book published by Bodley Head. He has written also written a short biography of King Stephen (for the ‘Penguin Monarchs’ series).