Clare Whitton

My academic career began at The Catholic University of America (CUA), where I recieved a Bachelor of Arts in History and Classical Civilizations (Honors) and a minor in Medieval & Byzantine Studies in 2018. My senior thesis, "The Holy House of Loreto: How the Papacy Influenced the Cult of the Holy House," won the John K. Zeender Senior History Thesis Prize. I was also inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society. I was accepted into the Accelerated Masters Program at CUA and completed a Masters of Arts in Late Medieval, Early Modern Religion and Society in 2019. My research was funded by the University Honors Program which simultaneously afforded me a position as the University Honors Graduate Fellow.

Between 2019 and 2021, I worked as an Academic and Career advisor at CUA. During this time, I served as the only staff member on several academic committees, including the Middle States Accreditation Committee and the Liberal Arts Curriculum Committee.

In 2022, I graduated with a Masters of Studies in History (Medieval) at the University of Oxford, Blackfriars Hall. My dissertation, "San Gennaro: The Evolution of a Cult, 1389-1631”, written under the supervision of Julia Smith, won The Best Dissertation of the Cohort Prize.

From 2022 onwards, I have been working on my DPhil degree at the same institution under the supervision of Julia Smith and Filippo de Vivo. I am funded by the Jubilee Scholarship at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. My research is further supported by a series of travel grants offered by the History Faculty at Oxford. My dissertation focuses on the cult of saints in medieval southern Italy and is rooted in liturgical and material evidence. My research interests more broadly include medieval relics and reliquaries, Catholic liturgy, patronal sanctity, and Italian sainthood.