Education

B.A. History with high honors, College of William and Mary (Summa Cum Laude), 2023. 

Certification in Material Culture and Public History, National Institute of American History and Democracy, 2023. 

AA, Liberal Arts with honors, Piedmont Virginia Community College (Summa Cum Laude), 2020.

Biography

Heidi Zmick is a first-year PhD student in the History Department. She researches late medieval and early modern European history (1350-1650), focusing on popular religious practice, gender, performance culture (especially dance), and material culture. Heidi’s current research explores popular religious devotion in early sixteenth-century Strasbourg, focusing on St. Vitus dance - a series of dance events that occurred across late medieval Europe - and the literary and visual genre known as Dance Macabre. 

Other research projects include “Jane Yetsweirt: Executor. Administrator. Assignee.” which examines books produced by the only woman in England to publish common law texts under royal patent. Heidi curated an exhibition in coordination with UVA’s Law Library Special Collections showcasing several of Jane Yetsweirt’s publications which will open in Spring 2025. 

Before attending UVA, Heidi received her B.A. in History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies from the College of William and Mary. Her undergraduate thesis, entitled “Levers a Dansh” [Get Up and Dance]: Monastic Dance in Sixteenth-Century England as Revealed by The Gresley Dance Manuscript,” examined a late fifteenth-century manuscript including dance notation that she argues was created in a monastic institution, advancing the study of dance as devotional practice in late medieval England.