Crimea is at the centre of the current Russo-Ukrainian war, but with its two-thousand-year history, ownership is complicated. Christian Raffensperger explores.
Did medieval states engage in any sort of surveillance of populations based on the collection of their personal data? Trevor Dean and Patricia Skinner ask what we can learn from lists and facial descriptions of police in Italian cities.
A simple prosthetic hand demonstrates care for the physically impaired in early medieval Europe, but does it also say something about the political nature of that care?
How did women escape domestic abuse in late medieval London? Charlotte Berry explores how women navigated the social and economic barriers to leaving a violent marriage to find a safe place to live in a medieval city.
In the tenth century, a powerful leader ruled over the medieval kingdom of Rus. Today, the modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus' as their cultural ancestors. Christian Raffensperger argues that the roots of…
What can the medieval face mask tell us about the role that medical face coverings play, not only in prevention of illness, but also as a signifier of identities and anxieties? Sadegh Attari explores how medical, cultural, and religious…
Just how much immigrant newcomers should have a voice in the political life of their new communities is a question that has occupied people for centuries. Bart Lambert explores the twists and turns of that issue in later medieval England in…
Perhaps we share the medieval fantasy that if only evil counsel were removed or more closely supervised, governance would be much improved, argues Jenni Nuttall as she sets the Dominic Cummings dispute in medieval context.
Bruce Campbell argues that interactions between climate and disease during the fourteenth-century Black Death can inform insights into Covid-19 and alter historians' understanding of the nature of historical change.
Epidemics are "moments of fluidity when parts of existing societies are laid bare as not fit for purpose". Looking at the history of the Black Death, Jane Whittle asks whether our current crisis could lead to new solutions to entrenched…
The oldest surviving book owned by English speakers was a book made in North Africa. Alison Hudson traces how these radical fragments reveal that immigrants and cultural exchange have always been fundamental to British economies, culture,…
‘Anglo-Saxons’ has long been associated with the early English people, but this label suffers from a long history of misuse. Mary Rambaran-Olm explores the racist legacy of this term.
Why are so few women found participating in premodern revolts? Shannon McSheffrey uses the Evil May Day riots of 1517 to unpack the patriarchal underpinnings of all our political practices
Alaya Swann explores connections between white supremacy and Dungeons and Dragons online communities, focusing on the perpetuation of the myth of a white medieval Europe.
Tensions about the rights of native and foreign-born workers in Britain, and attempts to deal with them, are not new but have been the subject of public debate for centuries. Even during the later Middle Ages, the influx of alien workers…
The way medieval men write about women can be more sophisticated and less immediately offensive discourse than Trump's pussy-talk, but their language may ultimately share a similarly dismissive attitude toward women as individuals with…
How did a hundred naked men in a bath help create a great empire? Charlemagne's pool parties suggest a male elite that had been heavily socialised not to respond to potential insults to honour by their fellows.
