The Fall 2024 Research Grant was awarded to Michael D. Bailey, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History. Bailey’s project will explore the contested association of witchcraft with women in medieval Europe in the 15th century. While the association of witchcraft with women is age-old, new stereotypes of witchcraft emerged in legal, theological, and literary discourse in the 15th century that informed and supported the major European witch hunts (15th-17th centuries. The gendering of witchcraft, not just as a matter of common perception but as a developed intellectual position accepted by both religious and secular authorities was part of this. The process was not straightforward, however, as new ideas, including new gendered ideas, about witchcraft generated intense skepticism even as they also enjoyed broad acceptance. Given the general prevalence of the association of witchcraft with women, these points of contestation and debate have never been thoroughly examined either by historians of magic and witchcraft or by scholars of gender studies. This project will result in a chapter preliminarily accepted for inclusion in an edited volume on gender and religion in medieval Europe, which the editors have proposed to Brepols Press. It will also form part of a larger research project I am pursuing on skepticism and uncertainty about many aspects of magic and witchcraft across the entire medieval period. In that context, research for this discrete project will be reworked into a final chapter or section in a broader monograph.