The Battle of Dyrham AD577: An Interdiscipliary Conference

Dr Ali Bonner

After reading for a degree in Classics at Oxford I worked in television for 15 years, before studying Anglo‑Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in Cambridge, where I gained a BA (Aff.), MPhil and PhD in the department, working on the manuscript transmission of Pelagius’ Letter to Demetrias. I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow 2012-15. My research has focused on Pelagius and Faustus of Riez, two British authors of the fifth century who wrote in Latin; overall my interest lies in the history of the peoples of the Insular milieu from the fifth century to the Conquest.

Dr Morn Capper

I have worked in the heritage sector in museum education at Sheffield Museums and Galleries Trust and contributed to major gallery teams and exhibitions at the British Museum and Birmingham Museums Trust. I acted as a specialist curatorial advisor to the Staffordshire Hoard gallery at Birmingham Museums Trust, 2011-2014. I also undertake curatorial consultancy and public engagement work.

My research investigates the development of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and relations with its neighbours (political, cultural, social and economic), while also exploring the wider impact of archaeological discoveries and relics from the Medieval past on people, places and communities in the modern day. My current research analyses how relations of power interacted with regional identity and culture during the making of Mercian hegemony over Anglo-Saxon England, and questions Mercian lordship and frontiers under the rulers Aethelred and Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians.

Prior to joining the University of Chester I was a Research Associate with ‘The Impact of Diasporas on the Making of Britain’, a Leverhulme-funded, cross-disciplinary, project exploring the impact of the movement of people on the making of Britain in the first Millennium AD through evidence from archaeology to modern heritage and identity.  

My current partnership exploring the life and heritage of Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, has developed outputs including a travelling exhibition and public conference re-evaluating her legacy in 2018 at Tamworth Castle Museum, working with partners at the Universities of Manchester and Keele. I am keen to develop sustainable heritage partnerships between universities, museums and other researchers, and with communities, taking a lead role in the Shrewsbury Castle Project and excavations. I am also interested in investigating the impact of museums and heritage collections, management and volunteering on heritage sustainability and in cross-disciplinary networks linking researchers with academic, professional and skilled amateur expertise.

Dr Mateusz Fafinski

I am a historian and digital humanist. I am currently a postdoc at University of Lausanne, and an Assistant Lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin. Previously, I was a TextTechnologies Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. I work on the nature of historical sources in the digital sphere, mapping medieval Latin manuscripts, and the role of urban space in Early Medieval societies as well as the inheritance of Rome in the post-Roman world.

Between 2015 and 2018, I did my PhD at the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies within the program Ancient Languages and Texts. My dissertation (2018) examines the uses of the material past in Early Medieval Britain, and will be published in 2020 by Amsterdam University Press as Roman Infrastructure in Early Medieval Britain: The Transformation of the Past in Text and Stone. I studied classical philology, Mediterranean culture studies and history in Poznan and Leeds, as well as British studies at Humboldt University Berlin.

Dr James Gerrard

I'm a Senior Lecturer in Roman Archaeology in History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University in the UK. I've been in Newcastle since 2011. Before then I was a post-doc based in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge University and a finds specialist working for Pre-Construct Archaeology in London. 

I'm a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.

My research interests are primarily focused on the End of the Western Roman Empire, the archaeology of the late Roman period and issues concerning identity, migration, movement and economics. I have published extensively on these themes.

I have an international reputation for the study of late Roman material culture, including pottery, coins and small finds. I have published extensively in these areas.

My fieldwork includes excavations in Somerset, Yorkshire, Orkney and London on a variety of late Roman and early medieval sites.

I originally studied Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield, but completed my MA and PhD at the University of York.

Dr Ben Guy

Ben Guy is a graduate student in the University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. In 2012 he graduated from Cambridge with a BA in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. In 2012–13 he was the Craig Scholar in Brown University, from where he graduated with an MA in History. He is currently working on a PhD thesis entitled ‘Medieval Welsh Genealogy: Texts, Contexts and Transmission’, in which he hopes to suggest when, where and why genealogical texts were composed in Wales between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, and how those texts were transmitted in manuscript form through the medieval and early modern periods and into the eighteenth century.

Other research interests include medieval chronicles, Welsh manuscripts, Welsh orthography and the transition from Roman to post-Roman Britain. Ben has published work on these topics in journals such as Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie and the National Library of Wales Journal. He is a regular attendee at conferences such as the International Medieval Congress at Leeds and Harvard Celtic Colloquium. He is a founding member of the Seminar Croniclau Cymreig, and is also the editor of Plant Brychan for the ‘Cult of Saints in Wales’ project of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies.

Neil Holbrook

Neil gained a first class degree in archaeology from Newcastle University in 1984 before starting work in professional archaeology. He went straight from University to direct excavations on Hadrian’s Wall for English Heritage and spent a number of happy years developing a specialism in Roman archaeology whilst working in the North East.

He moved on to Exeter Museum before being appointed Archaeological Manager at Cotswold Archaeology in 1991. Neil has been head of the salaried staff as Chief Executive for over 25 years, and during that time the company has grown to become one of the UK’s largest archaeological contractors. Neil has overseen and driven that growth and development and continues to ensure that Cotswold Archaeology is a successful, innovative and growing company delivering high quality work.

In addition to his managerial duties Neil maintains his interest in Roman archaeology and continues to publish widely. He continues to lead on the development and implementation of major collaborative research initiatives, building on the success of projects such as the Roman Grey Literature Project in collaboration with the University of Reading, and Exeter: A Place in Time with the University of Exeter.

In additional to leading the company Neil makes a number of other contributions to the heritage sector. He is chairman and a trustee of the Roman Research Trust (a grant giving charity); an administrator of the Haverfield Bequest (University of Oxford) and was President of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for 2017/18. He is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading and a chairman of Cobalt Health a leading medical imaging charity.

Dr David Parsons

David Parsons works on the vernacular languages of medieval Britain, particularly as revealed by place-names. He is currently writing the English Place-Name Society’s volume on the hundred of Oswestry in north-west Shropshire, an area where the Welsh language flourished until modern times.

He has recently completed a separate monograph on some medieval sources for this fascinating linguistic border zone. Other current projects include articles on the interplay of Norse, English, Gaelic and British (Cumbric) in north-west England; on the survival of Latin as a spoken language in post-Roman Britain; on the evidence of place-names for the medieval church in England and Wales; and on the early medieval inscriptions of south-western Scotland.

He also directs a project on the ‘Cult of Saints in Wales’, which is gradually publishing a range of edited texts of prose and poetry, in Latin and in Welsh, from medieval Wales, together with much subsidiary information on the saints and their veneration.

David is Director of the ‘Survey of English Place-Names’, the longest-established research project supported by the British Academy. He sits on the committees of the Academy’s ‘Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture’ and of the Welsh Place-Name Society. He is editor of the name-studies journal Nomina.

He was formerly Director of the Institute for Name-Studies at the University of Nottingham, moving to the Centre in February 2009.

Dr Andrew Seaman

Andy’s research interests focus on early medieval Wales and western Britain. He is an active field archaeologist and has published numerous articles and reviews, and is currently working on a monograph. In his free time Andy enjoys playing rugby, fishing, and walking Dorothy the miniature schnauzer.

Dr Alex Woolf

My main interests lie in the history of Britain and Ireland before the coming of the Normans with a bias towards the earlier part of the period, c.400-900. Particular interests include ethnic interaction and language shift, the development of political structures, and social and economic history.

Furth of these islands, I have less well developed interests in Late Roman and early post Roman Gaul and in Scandinavia in the first millennium AD. In many ways I feel a closer affinity to students of later prehistory than those of the later Middle Ages.

Professor Barbara Yorke

Barbara Yorke is Emeritus Professor of Early Medieval History. She gained her BA in History and Archaeology and her PhD from Exeter University. Since has been a member of the University of Winchester's History department since 1977, first as a Lecturer, then as a Reader.

An internationally recognised expert in Anglo-Saxon Winchester and Wessex,  and she will be one of the University experts joining Prof. Michael Wood for the event 'The Legacy of Alfred: the Anglo-Saxons and the birth of England', which will take place at the Winchester Discovery Centre on 12 Sept 2018. Find out more. She delivered a keynote lecture at the 2017 conference 'Winchester, a Medieval Royal City', hosted by the University (find out more), and played a key role in the high-profile project The Search for Alfred the Great, a collaboration between the University and Hyde900.

She has been a member of the Advisory Board of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2006-09); an advisor to the Leverhulme Trust-funded Anglo-Saxon Assemblies project (Director Prof. Andrew Reynolds, UCL 2009-12); a member of the Advisory Panel for the Staffordshire Hoard (2014-16) and an advisor to the Leverhulme Trust-funded Travel and Transport in Anglo-Saxon England project (Director Prof. Andrew Reynolds, UCL, 2015-18). She was guest curator of the exhibition ‘King Alfred: Warfare, Wealth and Wisdom’ at Winchester Discovery Centre (2008).

She is Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London.