Abigail (Abby) P. Dowling, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
Director of Great Books
Abigail (Abby) P. Dowling, Ph.D., joined the history department in 2015. She is an environmental historian of premodern Europe, especially late medieval France. She has served as the director of Mercer’s Great Books program since 2025.
Education
- Ph.D., History and Medieval Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
- M.A., History, University of California, Santa Barbara
- B.A., History and French, University of Arizona
Specialty
Medieval Europe (France), environmental history, natural resource management, landscape, sustainability, digital humanities, databases and history, GIS and history
Professional Interests
Dowling loves teaching first-year students, and you can most often find her teaching HIS 105: World Histories and GBK 101: Among Gods and Heroes. You will find games, role-plays and digital tools in nearly every course she teaches.
She is currently working on two books. The first, Negotiating Natural Resources, addresses how elites battled on, in, and about land and natural resources in the French county of Artois in the three decades leading up to the terrible Hundred Years’ War between England, France and the Low Countries (1337-1453). The second book, Humble Things, tracks five overlooked finished goods (nails, lath, mortar and bricks, tiles, and gutters) and uses composite biographies of Artesian artisans and manual laborers to better understand the role of environment in shaping medieval labor histories.
Other Interests
Dowling loves spending time with her family, walking her dog, reading for pleasure and crafting.
Recent Publications
- Co-editor with Tanya Stabler Miller and Nancy McLaughlin, Medieval Work, Worship, and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices: Essays in Honor of Sharon A. Farmer. Routledge, 2025.
- “The World of Nature,” in A Cultural History of Leisure in the Medieval Age (500-1450), vol. 2, ed. Paul Milliman, in A Cultural History of Leisure series, ed. Peter Borsay and Jan Hein Furnée (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024): 163-182.
- Dowling, A. P., Bailey, K. A., Wright, K. B., Griggs, A. J. “Hands-on Workshops for Real World Experience: Scaffolded Assignments and Archival Objects in the Historian’s Craft.” Currents in Teaching and Learning 14.2 (Jan 2023): 62-82.
- Co-edited with Richard Keyser, Conservation’s Roots: Managing for Sustainability in Premodern Europe, ca. 1000-1700 (Berghahn Books, 2020).
Contact Abigail Dowling, Ph.D.
478-301-2872
dowling_ap@mercer.edu
Office: Langdale Hall, Room 308