Iona McCleery

I am a historian of medieval medicine, food, daily life, and saints’ cults, with a focus on Portugal and its early empire, especially in West Africa and the Atlantic islands. I am increasingly interested in the environmental humanities, and the role of climate, natural history and habitat in Portuguese chronicles, especially in the context of the early European expansion into the Atlantic. I am the editor of The Cultural History of Medicine in the Middle Ages (Bloomsbury, 2021), and one of the translators of The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes, ed. Amélia Hutchinson and Teresa Amado (Boydell, 2023). A recent publication of mine is on the major storm and flood in the Crónica de D. João I by Fernão Lopes (open access).

I am currently working on a book about the journey to West Africa, Portugal and Spain by the Bruges merchant’s agent Eustache de la Fosse in 1479-80. This project means I am researching the natural history of turtles, oysters, and rabbits, amongst other things.