Aleksandra McClain

Lecturer (University of York, UK)
MA (Distinction) Medieval Archaeology (University of York, UK)
BA (Magna Cum Laude) Archaeological Studies (Yale University, USA)

I'm Aleksandra McClain, currently a temporary lecturer in the Archaeology Department at the University of York, UK. I have recently submitted my PhD thesis, which was begun in October of 2001, having received an Overseas Research Scholarship to pursue doctoral work. At the moment I am researching medieval churches and funerary monuments, focusing on the North Riding of Yorkshire. More details about my research can be found here. My supervisor was Dr. Jon Finch, and Dr. Tania Dickinson and Ms. Jane Grenville serve on my thesis advisory panel.

I first formally pursued a long-standing interest in archaeology, and medieval churches particularly, while an undergraduate at Yale University, in New Haven, CT. In May 2000 I completed a 4-year BA degree in Archaeological Studies, an interdisciplinary major which allowed me to focus my interests on medieval art and architecture. I took a practical archaeology field course, as well as classes covering the archaeology, culture, and history of a wide variety of ancient societies, including Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesoamerica, India, medieval Britain, and medieval and modern Europe. Under the guidance of Prof. Walter Cahn and Prof. Maria Georgopolou, I completed an undergraduate dissertation on the cathedrals of Winchester and York in the Saxo-Norman transition.

During my time at Yale I was fortunate enough to receive funding to pursue summer fieldwork, leading to my participation in the 1999 Hyde Abbey dig in Winchester, UK, run by Winchester Museums Service and Prof. Eric Klingelhofer. Having enjoyed my Winchester experience and the research for my undergraduate dissertation, I decided to take my interest in medieval archaeology to Britain. I received a departmental overseas scholarship to pursue a masters degree course at York in October 2000, and I gained an MA with distinction in Medieval Archaeology. The taught course covered a broad range of archaeological theory, practice, and interpretation, specializing in medieval Britain from the fifth to sixteenth centuries. Apart from the dedicated Medieval Archaeology seminars, I completed options classes in British and Scandinavian Viking settlement and culture, later medieval buildings, and medieval Latin. My MA dissertation was also supervised by Dr. Finch, with assistance from Dr. Lawrence Butler, and was on the churches and monuments of tenth to twelfth-century Ryedale, North Yorkshire. The successful fieldwork and findings of the dissertation led to an expansion of the topic, which forms my current thesis.