Prune Engérant is a PhD candidate at Edinburgh College of Art, supported by the 2025 ECA PhD Scholarship. Her research explores the representation of monstrous motherhood in fifteenth-century vernacular manuscripts, including illuminated romances. Focusing on the medieval monster as a cultural object – who reflect the beliefs, anxieties and desires of their context of production – her study addresses the ways in which medieval ideas around gender, sex, and religion are embodied within the monstrous maternal; the productive potential of monstrosity; and the role of secular texts in platforming more ambivalent and ambiguous maternal representations in the late Middle Ages.

Prune holds an undergraduate degree in History of Art and English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, and a Master’s degree in Medieval Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art. She received the 2023 Association of Art History Dissertation Prize and the Huntley MacDonald Sinclair Dissertation Prize for her undergraduate dissertation.