As a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space (LCHS), I work in and between the fields of contemporary literature, creative writing, and the history of aviation, astronomy, and space travel.
My research at the LCHS follows two main strands. The first focusses on astronomy in the Early Middle Ages (c. 500–1100). How did people in this period make sense of the night sky and their place in the universe? How did scholars and wider society interpret celestial phenomena, such as comets, eclipses, aurorae, meteors and supernovae?
The second strand focusses on space in the contemporary literary imagination (since c. 1990), including literary and commercial fiction as well as popular-non-fiction such as histories of spaceflight and astronauts’ memoirs. What sorts of narratives are most popular, and which are neglected? Have the sorts of stories we tell about space changed in recent decades?
The Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space is a new research hub, based at Space Park Leicester, which promotes arts and humanities approaches to outer space studies and aims to further understanding of how humans engage with and experience space.
My PhD thesis explored historical fiction in practice and theory. What is it, and what is it for? Why do we write fiction set in the past? How is it constructed? What are its responsibilities and its possible future directions?
Other research interests include:
- medievalism (the Middle Ages in modern culture);
- monastic and intellectual culture in early medieval England.
Publications
Aitcheson, James. ‘The Date of Eilmer of Malmesbury’s Flight’, Notes and Queries, 73.2 (2026), pp. 181–3 <https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjag066>.
Aitcheson, James. ‘Historical Friction: Constructing Pastness in Fiction Set in Eleventh-Century England’. In Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries, edited by Rachel Fletcher, Thijs Porck and Oliver M. Traxel. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2022.
Aitcheson, James. ‘Writing the Middle Ages: New Approaches in Historical Fiction’. In Middle Ages without Borders: An International Conversation on Medievalism, edited by Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Pierre Savy and Lila Yawn. Rome: École française de Rome, 2021.<https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efr.28132>.
Qualifications
PhD Creative Writing (2021)
University of Nottingham
MA Creative Writing (2008)
Bath Spa University
MA (Cantab.) History (2006)
University of Cambridge