Laura Ashe is a British historian of English medieval literature, history and culture (c. 1000–1550). She lectures in English and is a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.^[1][2] She was educated at Leeds Girls' High School (independent).

In 2009 Ashe won a Philip Leverhulme Prize, for the international impact of her research. In 2015 she was the presenter for BBC Radio 3's A Cultural History of the Plague^[3] and has taken part as an expert panelist for BBC Radio 4's In Our Time on the topics of The 12th Century Renaissance,^[4] Beowulf,^[5] Chivalry^[6] Le Morte d'Arthur,^[7] Purgatory,^[8] Thomas Becket and Gawain and the Green Knight. She contributed to Art that Made Us, an eight-part BBC Two TV series in 2022 presenting an alternate history of Britain through art and literature.^[9]

Selected publications

• Ashe, Laura (2016), Richard II: a brittle glory, Penguin Monarchs, Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0141979892
• Ashe, Laura (2015), Early Fiction in England: from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Chaucer, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0141392875
• Ashe, Laura; Patterson, Ian (2014), War and Literature, Essays and Studies, v. 67, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, ISBN 978-1843843818
• Ashe, Laura (2011), Fiction and History in England, 1066-1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 68, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0521174367
• Ashe, Laura; Djordjević, Ivana; Weiss, Judith (2010), The Exploitations of Medieval Romance, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1846157882