Research interests

• Medieval British history;
• Geoffrey of Monmouth and British history;
• prophecy, historical ideology and origin legends;
• land and power in Anglo-Saxon England;
• medieval palaeography;
• cross-cultural relations in medieval Britain;
• late Saxon and early Norman Exeter.

I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship 2008-10 to work on a project entitled `Script and Forgery in England to A.D. 1100' and I am currently working on a series of papers to bring this research to completion.

Research students

As first supervisor

2006-13 John Slevin (part-time) `Alfred of Beverley and his works'. Awarded,

2006-10 Edward Mullins, `Using cognitive science to think about the twelfth century: revisiting the individual in twelfth-century Latin texts' (with Dr Catherine Rider; departmental studentship). Awarded.

2009- Jaka Jarc, `Ideas of property in late Anglo-Saxon England' (Slovenian government studentship). In progress.

As second supervisor (2007-)

2005-9 Dr Matthew Mesley, `Episcopal identity in twelfth-century saints' lives' (with Dr Sarah Hamilton; AHRC studentship). Awarded.

2009-14 Daniel Roach, 'Orderic Vitalis, Crusading Historian' (with Prof Simon Barton; AHRC studentship). Awarded.

2009-13 Duncan Wright (with Prof Stephen Rippon; AHRC studentship). Awarded.

Other information

Current administrative posts in Exeter (2011/12)

Coordinator, Postgraduate Taught  students (History)

Member, Board of Studies, M.A. in Medieval Studies

Member, History Learning and Teaching Committee.
 

Editorial activities and other work for external bodies

Member, British Academy - Royal Historical Society Joint Committee on Anglo-Saxon Charters (2002-)

Elected Member, Advisory Board, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2008-11)

Chair, Publication Prize Committee, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2009-11)

Interim Second Vice-President, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (July-December 2011)

Editorial Boards, Arthurian Literature and Anglo-Saxon (both current); Early Medieval Europe (to January 2008)

Memberships

Fellow, Royal Historical Society

Member, International Arthurian Society, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, Medieval Academy of America

External examining: taught programmes

Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Tripos, Cambridge (Parts I and II): 2000-3

M.A. in Medieval Studies, Birkbeck, University of London: 2001-3

B.A. in History, University of Nottingham: 2004-7

M.A. in History, University of Nottingham: 2005-7

External examining: research degrees

Ph.D University of Cambridge 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011; University of St Andrews 2008, 2012; University of Leeds 2010; King's College London 2011; University of Helsinki 2012.

M.Phil. University of Nottingham 2006

 

Modules taught

• HIH1501 - The Viking Phenomenon
• HIH3110 - The Celtic Frontier: Sources
• HIH3111 - The Celtic Frontier: Context

Biography

Current Position: Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies, King's College London
 

I read Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and History at the University of Cambridge. After graduating, I undertook doctoral research on the medieval reception of the History of Geoffrey of Monmouth. I held the posts of Unofficial Fellow (JRF), then Tutor and Fellow, at Gonville and Caius College before resigning to take up a permanent position in Exeter in 1992. Having been appointed as Lecturer in the former Department of History and Archaeology, I became a Senior Lecturer in 2001 and Associate Professor in 2007. In Michaelmas 2000 I was affiliated for a term to the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Cambridge, as a Research Associate.

I served on the editorial board of the Blackwells journal Early Medieval Europe from 1999-2007. I was elected to sit on the Advisory Board of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists from 2008-11, and am currently serving as Acting Second Vice-President. I have been a member of the Royal Historical Society-British Academy Joint Committee on Anglo-Saxon Charters since 2002. I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the period 2008-10, during the tenure of which I delivered the fifth G.O. Sayles Lecture on Mediaeval History at the University of Aberdeen. In May 2011 I attended the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI as Richard Rawlinson Congress Speaker http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/speakers.html.