Center for Metanoia Studies (Centre d'Etudes Interdisciplinaires de la Métanoïa)

Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research centres on daily life, religion, and the family in late antiquity, and the related problems of martyrdom, resistance, and agency. Her books include The Virgin and the Bride (1996) on how and why virginity replaced motherhood as the iconic credential of female moral authority; The Fall of the Roman Household (2007), on the Christianization of the family from the fourth to sixth centuries, focusing on the central role of married female householders; Band of Angels (2013), a general history of early Christian women, and Queens of a Fallen World (2023), a re-reading of Augustine’s Confessions through the stories he tells of the women in his life.