Dr Bryony Coombs is a Teaching Fellow specialising in late-medieval art in northern Europe. After studying Fine Art as an undergraduate, her doctorate at Edinburgh University focussed on Franco-Scottish cultural connections during the late-medieval and early modern periods. Specialising in the transfer of ideas in northern Europe, and text and image relationships in late-medieval manuscripts, her research balances an exploration of the visual and material, with focussed archival research.

Her first monograph, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2024, ‘offers an original and sophisticated exploration of the artistic and literary patronage of Scottish émigré in late medieval and early modern France. The volume places particular emphasis on visual imagery as a means to convey and depict ideas about individual, lineage and collective ‘national’ identities, the histories that underpinned them, and the nature of the relationship between the French and Scottish realms.’

Bryony’s second monograph, Scotland on Parchment: Illuminated Manuscripts in Late-Medieval Scotland will be coming out with Edinburgh University Press in their new Visual and Material Cultures of Scotland Series. Bryony was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) in May 2024, and has been the recipient of the Murray Medal for History (2019) and the Jack Medal (IASSL, 2021).