Jessica Cochran
Jessica Cochran is a Ph.D. student in History with primary interests in Western European paleography and codicology, manuscript studies, medieval frontiers and borderlands, and the role of the animal turn in the medieval past. Geographically, she focuses on the manuscript culture that developed north of the Alps. She came to UNM in 2019 and completed the Masters in History before continuing to the Ph.D. Prior to becoming a historian, Jessica received a B.A. in German from Elizabethtown College and an M.A. in German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her academic career has taken her to Japan, Austria, Germany, and England, and her travels have given her a strong multicultural approach to history. Jessica has taken a variety of courses at UNM on indigenous, gendered, and global histories that have helped her incorporate borderlands into her medieval research. Her work explores the non-geographic borders of medieval Europe and how handwriting crossed these borders regularly to the point of becoming a unique medieval commodification that continues to hold value today.
