At the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, in 2016 there were three panels on equestrian topics, and a few equine papers among a plentitude of animal history panels. Every presenter, even those from other fields or disciplines, said the same thing: they’d rarely met another equine historian, much less presented with a full group; the available literature was sparse and in need of updating; and finding scholars to collaborate with who understood both the equine and the historical aspects was nearly impossible. Now, we plan to change that. Meet the team behind the Equine History Collective:

Katrin Boniface, University of California, Riverside
Kat Boniface is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside, studying horses and horsemanship in early modern Europe, with a background in medieval literature. Prior to returning to academics, she earned a trade degree in horse training from Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre. Current research areas include medieval and early modern equine nutrition, changing definitions of “humane” treatment in animal training, and genetic history.

Kathryn Renton, University of California, Los Angeles
Kathryn Renton is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying horse breeding in the early modern Spanish empire (1490s-1580s). Her research considers how the practices of horse breeding contributed to the vocabulary of race (raza) and caste (casta), considering the shared concepts of generation and reproduction that were used to explain hereditary features among human and animal populations, and the role of the horse in symbolizing and embodying social distinctions in the early modern period.

Janice Gunther Martin, University of Notre Dame
Janice G. Martin is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Notre Dame, where she is currently a graduate fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. With a background in biochemistry and chemistry, her interests include early modern science and medicine, and how human beings have defined and interacted with the natural world more broadly. Her dissertation examines equine medicine in sixteenth-century Castile, especially the practices of equine doctors (albéitares).

Lelian Maldonado, University of California, Riverside
Lelian Maldonado is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside, studying cultural memory and civic identity in the material landscape and archaeological record. Recent projects have included depictions of racehorse owners in Aristophanes as well as the many reproductions and symbolic uses of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius.

Alyse Yeargan, University of California, Riverside
Alyse Yeargan is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside, studying museum education, and is the 2017 Gluck Fellow at the California Museum of Photography. Her equine historical focus is sport and gender, particularly the early modern and modern development of competition riding attire.

     And of course, Anastasija Ropa and Timothy Dawson, who orginized the Medieval Equestrianism panels at Leeds 2016, and again this year. Anastasija Ropa is a lecturer at the Latvian Academy of Sport Education, and also orginized an equestrian panel at the International Arthurian Congress this year, and is spearheading the publication of a collected work based on the Leeds panels. The call for papers for this session at Leeds 2018 is up!