Research Blog

By James R. Burns DID YOU KNOW that Theodoric the Great, ruler of the Ostrogoths (c. 475-526), was the son of two slaves? Well, he...

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(Limoges, France, the home of Pelagia.) ‘Since the pressures of the world weighed heavily on a woman, not least on a widow, Erkanfrida needed to...

Last week, I went to the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum. It situated slavery in wide-ranging Eurasian commercial networks, through which (for example)...

(James C. Scott, 1936–2024. Photo credit: Yale.) By James Burns Even if one accepts that the serf, the slave, and the untouchable will have trouble...

By Justin Pigott This month some of the DoSSE team made the short trip north to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. As a historian...

By James Burns At this year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies at West Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Sheida, Seth, and I gave our papers on...

On Monday 15th April 2024, our Principal Investigator, Erin Thomas Dailey, will be giving the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture, at the Bonn Center for...

Slemish, in present-day County Antrim, where some think Patricius laboured as a slave Unlike most early medieval authors, who remain unknown to the broader public,...

Why did the Roman Empire fall? Little did I know, when I first encountered this question as an undergraduate, that it would propel me along...