Patricia Skinner

How did the Welsh travel beyond their geographical borders in the Middle Ages? What did they do, what did they take with them, and what did they bring back? The first book to study the medieval Welsh on the move, The Welsh and the Medieval World offers a multidisciplinary entry point into Welsh migration and showcases a bold new generation of Welsh historians. Edited by historian Patricia Skinner, this book is an exploration of identity within and outside the Welsh territories. Deep considerations of the Welsh abroad draw upon wider concepts of nationhood, diaspora, and colonization; economic migration; gender relations; and the pursuit of educational, religious, and cultural opportunities. Contributors ask whether there is anything specifically "Welsh" about the experiences of medieval migrants and correspondents, and they study how these medieval experiences contribute to the broader history of emigration and exchange. Examining archaeological, historical, and literary evidence together, The Welsh and the Medieval World enables a better understanding of the ways in which people from Wales interacted with and understood their near and distant neighbours.

Travel, Migration and Exile

The Welsh and the Medieval World

Ross Balzaretti

Julia Barrow

A comprehensive survey of recent work in Medieval Italian history and archaeology by an international cast of contributors, arranged within a broader context of studies on other regions and major historical transitions in Europe, c.400 to c.1400CE. Each of the contributors reflect on the contribution made to the field by Chris Wickham, whose own work spans studies based on close archival work, to broad and ambitious statements on economic and social change in the transition from Roman to medieval Europe, and the value of comparing this across time and space.

Papers for Chris Wickham

Italy and Early Medieval Europe

This wide-ranging volume combines hagiography and chronicles with less well-known charters and archaeology to illuminate the social history of medicine in southern Italy. Its detailed analysis provides new insight into the experience of sickness in the middle ages.

Health and Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy

Emily Cock

What is a face and how does it relate to personhood? Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Present offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the many ways in which faces have been represented in the past and present, focusing on the issue of facial difference and disfigurement read in the light of shifting ideas of beauty and ugliness. Faces are central to all human social interactions, yet their study has been much overlooked by disability scholars and historians of medicine alike. By examining the main linguistic, visual and material approaches to the face from antiquity to contemporary times, contributors place facial diversity at the heart of our historical and cultural narratives. This cutting-edge collection of essays will be an invaluable resource for humanities scholars working across history, literature and visual culture, as well as modern practitioners in education and psychology.

Past and Present

Approaching Facial Difference

This book is open access under a CC-BY 4.0 license. This book examines social and medical responses to the disfigured face in early medieval Europe, arguing that the study of head and facial injuries can offer a new contribution to the history of early medieval medicine and culture, as well as exploring the language of violence and social interactions. Despite the prevalence of warfare and conflict in early medieval society, and a veritable industry of medieval historians studying it, there has in fact been very little attention paid to the subject of head wounds and facial damage in the course of war and/or punitive justice. The impact of acquired disfigurement —for the individual, and for her or his family and community—is barely registered, and only recently has there been any attempt to explore the question of how damaged tissue and bone might be treated medically or surgically. In the wake of new work on disability and the emotions in the medieval period, this study documents how acquired disfigurement is recorded across different geographical and chronological contexts in the period.

Patricia Skinner

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