Paul Kershaw
Associate Professor
Office Hours: ON LEAVE
Field & Specialties
North-Western Europe and the Mediterranean world in late antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages, with a concentration upon the period c. CE 700-950
Carolingian Europe; post-Roman Britain; the Viking world; early medieval diasporas; political thought and practice; historiography; travel, cross-cultural communication, and diplomacy
Education
PhD, King's College, University of London
MPhil, Medieval History, Jesus College, University of Cambridge
BA (Hons), Medieval and Modern History, King's College, University of London
Publications
Books
Cities, Saints and Communities in Early Medieval Europe, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 46, edited with Scott DeGregorio (Brepols, 2020). 408 pp. Link.
Peaceful Kings. Peace, Power and the Early Medieval Political Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2011). xvii + 313 pp. Link
The Early Medieval Inscriptions of Brittany/Les inscriptions de la Bretagne du Haut Moyen Âge, with W. Davies, J. Graham-Campbell, M. Handley, J. Koch, G. Le Duc and K. Lockyear (Celtic Studies Publications, 2000). xviii + 340 pp.
Selected Articles
'English History and Irish Readers in the Frankish World’, in D. Ganz and P. Fouracre, eds, Frankland. The Franks and the World of Early Medieval Europe (Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 126-51.
‘Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian Lay Intellectual’, in P. Wormald and J. L. Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge University Press, 2007, paperback 2011), pp. 77-105.
'Laughter After Babel's Fall: Miscommunication and Misunderstanding in the Early Middle Ages', in Guy Halsall, ed., Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2002, paperback 2010), pp. 179-202.
'Power, Prayer and Illness in Asser's Life of Alfred', Early Medieval Europe 10.2 (2001), 201-24
'The Alfred-Guthrum Treaty: Scripting Accommodation and Interaction in Viking-Age England', in D. Hadley and J.D. Richards, eds, Cultures in Contact. Scandinavian Settlement in England (Brepols, 2000),pp. 43-64.
Major Online Projects
M. Handley, P.J.E. Kershaw, K. Lockyear, with W. Davies, K. Forsyth, J. Graham-Campbell and J.-P. Wilson, CISP Database of all Non-runic Inscriptions from Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, South-Western England and Brittany,400-1100 AD (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database).
Awards & Honors
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (elected 2013)
NEH/Richard A. and Sara Page Mayo Distinguished Teaching Professorship (2013-16)
University of Virginia Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award (2005)