Louise Haywood's research interests lie in medieval Iberian literature and culture.

Monographs include The Lyrics of the 'Historia troyana polimétrica'(London, 1996) and Sex, Scandal, and Sermon in Fourteenth-Century Spain: Juan Ruiz's 'Libro de Buen Amor' (New York, 2008). She has edited a collection of essays on the female voice in Medieval Iberian literature (Culture Contexts/Female Voices, 2000), and co-edited A Companion to the 'Libro de Buen Amor' (2004, with Louise O. Vasvári), and Juan Ruiz: Arcipreste de Hita y el 'Libro de Buen Amor': II Congreso Internacional; Homenaje a Alan Deyermond (with Francisco Toro Ceballo, Geraldine Coates and Francisco Bautista, 2008). A revised second edition of a co-written course-book (Thinking Translation: A course in Translation Method; Spanish to English) appeared in 2009. She has published numerous articles on medieval Iberian culture from the Poema de mio Cid (1207) onwards.

Current work is on authority, truancy and humour in fourteenth-century Iberian culture and the poetics of vision and scholastic psychology in fifteenth-century literary culture. Other interests include the representation (modern and medieval) of the three faiths of medieval Iberia and feminist approaches to medieval culture. She has been involved in collaborative projects on the ideology of cancionero poetry and Jews, Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia and is a founding member, with Cambridge colleges Dr G Evans and Dr I McNeill, of the Tactics and Praxis Seminar group (https://www.tacticsandpraxis.org/), which makes space for creativity, play and pleasure in academic life. She has exhibited multimedia textile art pieces.

Prof Haywood welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to her interests.