Professor Lesley Abrams

Emeritus Professor of Early Medieval History and Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford
Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, Cambridge
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I began my research with a study of Glastonbury Abbey and its archive in the pre-Conquest period, and I retain an interest in all periods of Anglo-Saxon history, especially the Church.

Some of my research and publications have concentrated on periods of conversion to Christianity, including the English in the seventh century and Scandinavians in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, and I ventured into the early modern period with an exercise in comparative history, ‘Bede, Gregory, and Strategies of Conversion in Anglo-Saxon England and the Spanish New World’ (Jarrow Lecture, 2015).

I am also interested in all aspects of the Scandinavian world in the early middle ages, including viking military activity and the history of Scandinavia and the overseas settlements. Within this broad field, I have worked particularly on Scandinavians outside their homelands, applying an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to issues of integration and interaction between incomers and established societies, while also considering what far-flung Viking-Age populations had in common. My published work on these subjects includes 'Diaspora and Identity in the Viking Age', Early Medieval Europe 20:1 (2012), 17-38, 'Early Normandy', Anglo-Norman Studies 35 (2013), 45-64, and ‘Connections and Exchange in the Viking World’, in Byzantium and the Viking World (ed. F. Androshchuk, J. Shepard, and M. White) (Stockholm, 2016), pp. 27-52.

Although I retired from formal teaching, I continue to offer advice to students and to carry out research in these fields. My latest publications focus on viking armies from a religious perspective: ‘The Scandinavian Encounter with Christianity Overseas: Diplomatic Conversions in the 9th and 10th Centuries’, in Viking Encounters: Proceedings of the 18th Viking Congress (2020); ‘Two Baptisms, Some Funerals, and Other Contexts of Interaction: Vikings and the Church in England in the Late Ninth Century’, in the Gersum Project’s New Perspectives on the Scandinavian Legacy in Medieval Britain (forthcoming); and ‘The Religious Life of Viking Armies’, in Viking Camps. Case Studies and Comparisons (forthcoming).

I also write about place-names, as most recently in the Cameron Lecture, ‘Vive la Différence? The Historical Value of Scandinavian Place-Names in England and Normandy’, available online through the Institute for Name-Studies website.

Since 2016 I have been an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic of the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Professor in the School of English (Centre for the Study of the Viking Age) of the University of Nottingham.

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la410@cam.ac.uk
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