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Dr. John Aspinwall

Address:

Dr. John Aspinwall

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

Zentrum für Europäische Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften (ZEGK)

Historisches Seminar

Marstallstraße 6 (7857)

69117 Heidelberg

 

Contact: 

via email: j.aspinwall@sfb1671.uni-heidelberg.de

 

Research interests:

  • Relations between the Crusader states and Europe

  • Military orders and institutions

  • The Mediterranean

 

Dissertation:

  • The Cronica Roberti Biscardi et fratrum ac Rogerii Comitis Mileti: a Twelfth-Century History of the Norman Conquest of Sicily

 

Curriculum Vitae:

Dr John Aspinwall is a research associate in the CRC sub-project A04 ‘Jerusalem, the distant origin: concepts of home in medieval Palestinian orders’. He received his PhD from Lancaster University with a thesis on narratives of conquest in the central Mediterranean, focussing on southern Italy and Sicily under Norman rule. He has taught at the Universities of Lancaster, Tübingen, Munich and Constance and has held research fellowships at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich and the British School in Rome. He has published in English, German and Italian, worked as a translator for the journal ‘Transmediterranean History’ and is currently preparing a critical edition with an English translation of the so-called ‘Cronica Roberti Biscardi’, a chronicle of the Norman conquest of Sicily.

 

Classes (external): 

Feb. – Jun. 2024: History and Politics in the Global South (Salem Kolleg)

Oct. 2023-Feb. 2024: The Red Sea in Context (Salem Kolleg)

Winter term 2023/24: Between Scylla and Charybdis: Legends and Mythmaking in the Medieval Mediterranean (University Tübingen)

Feb.–Jun. 2022: European Politics (Salem Kolleg)

Wnter term 2021/22: Working with Medieval Sources: Documents, Art, and Architecture from Europe and the Mediterranean
(University München)

Oct. 2021–Feb. 2022: Europe: Formation and Development (Salem Kolleg)

Mar.–Jun. 2021: What is Global History? (Salem Kolleg, Online)

Oct. 2020–Feb. 2021: Southern Europe: Histories and Landscapes (Salem Kolleg)

Mar.–Jun. 2020: Mediterranean Connections in the Antique (Digital Course, Salem Kolleg)

Oct. 2019–Feb. 2020: Rome and the Mediterranean (Digital Course, Salem Kolleg)

Winter term 2019/20: ‘Men of the North Wind’: The Norman Expansions Between the Tenth and Twelfth Centuries (University of Konstanz)

Jan.–Jul. 2019: Dissertation Supervision HIST251 (Lancaster University)

 

Publications:
 

A Dominican History of Muslim Sicily: Revisiting the Epistola Fratris Conradi', Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval

Mediterranean (forthcoming 2025).

 
'The Chronica Roberti Biscardi et fratrum ac Rogerii Comitis Mileti', in: The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Grame Dunphy, Brill's Medieval Reference Library Online (Leiden, forthcoming 2025). 
 
'The Epistola Fratris Conradi', in: The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Grame Dunphy, Brill's Medieval Reference Library Online (Leiden, forthcoming 2025).'
 
‘The Epistola Fratris Conradi: Critical Edition and Translation’, in: Markus Krumm and Tobias Daniels (eds), Sammeln, gebrauchen,
aneignen. Spätmittelalterliche Perspektiven auf das hochmittelalterliche Süditalien, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 61 (Utrecht,
forthcoming 2025).

Review of Philippa Byrne, Caitlin Ellis (eds), Maritime Exchange and the Making of Norman Worlds (Turnhout, 2023), in: Cerae: An
Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 11 (2024).
                                           
‘La Cronica Roberti Biscardi et fratrum ac Rogerii Comitis Mileti: Una storia "dimenticata" della conquista normanna della Sicilia’, in: A.
Mammato et al. (eds), L’Italia Meridionale nel Medioevo. Un centro politico, culturale ed economico (Secoli V-XIII), Centro di Cultura e Storia
Amalfitana (Amalfi, forthcoming 2024).
 
The Cronica Roberti Biscardi et fratrum ac Rogerii Comitis Mileti: New Considerations on Dating and Authorship’, Deutsches Archiv für
Erforschung des Mittelalters (2023), pp. 573–608.
                                           
‘The Lion, the Camel, and the Cassa of Terracina: Transfer and Exchange on the Borders of Norman Italy’, in: Dan Armstrong et al.
(eds), Borders and the Norman World: Frontiers and Boundaries in Medieval Europe (Woodbridge, 2023), pp. 331–358.
 
‘Multiculturalism and Power Relations: Reframing Norman Sicily’ (with Theresa Jäckh), in: Viola Skiba, Bernd Schneidmüller, and Nikolas
Jaspert (eds), Norman Connections. Normannische Verflechtungen zwischen Skandinavien und dem Mittelmeer, Publikationen der Reiss
Engelhorn-Museen 95 (Regensburg, 2022), pp. 291‒309.
                                           
‘Norman Identity and the Anonymous Historia Sicula’ (with Alex Metcalfe), in: Dirk Booms and Peter Higgs (eds), Sicily, Culture and
Conquest, British Museum Research Publications 222 (London, 2020), pp. 133–141.
                                           
‘1091: Eine Urkunde Rogers I. zur Neuordnung Siziliens’ (with Theresa Jäckh), Transmediterrane Geschichte, 3:1 (2021). DOI:
10.18148/tmh/2021.3.1.37.
                                  
Review of, Fulvio Delle Donne, Breve chronicon de rebus Siculis. Edizione critica, traduzione e comment (Florence, 2017), in:
Sehepunkte, 17, 12 (2017).

 

In progress: 

The Cronica Roberti Biscardi: A Critical Edition and Translation of a Twelfth-Century Chronicle of the Norman Conquest of Sicily (with Drs Alex Metcalfe and John Thorley)

Narrating Muslim Sicily in Fourteenth–Century Palermo: Revisiting the Epistola Fratris Conradi

 

Presentations (selection):

2024: Narrating Muslim Sicily in Fourteenth–Century Palermo, International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds

2022: The Epistola Fratris Conradi: A Lost History of Muslim Sicily?, Ludwig-Maximilians-University München

2021: Movement and Medieval Manuscript Transmission in Early-Modern Southern Italy, Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana

2020: ‘The World of Yesterday?’ Surveying the Norman Conquests in Twelfth-Century Sicily, University of St Andrews

2019: Patronage and Politics: Literary Production as a Strategy of Power in Rogerian Sicily?, University of St. Andrews

2018: The Cronica Roberti Biscardi, Ludwig-Maximilians-University München

2018: ‘From an Ancient and Antique Hand’: The Early-Modern Manuscript Transmission of the Cronica Roberti Biscardi, University of
Leeds

2017: The Historia Sicula: the Kingdom’s Conquest History?, University of Oxford

2016: The Norman Conquest of Sicily: A Land Without Crusaders?, The British Museum

2015: Norman Identity and the Anonymous Historia Sicula, Centro Europeo di Studi Normanni, Ariano-Irpino

 

Scientific Collaborations: 

2024-present: Member of the Medieval Chronicle Society 
 
2024-present: Member of the Heidelberger Editionen und Texterschließung
 
2019‒present: Collaboration under Prof. Dr Daniel König and Prof. Dr Theresa Jäckh on a trilingual source reader: “Transmediterranean
History. An Anthology of Commented Primary Sources”, Universität Konstanz
 
2019–2022: Collaboration with Dr Alex Metcalfe on the project “The Norman Conquest of Muslim Sicily: A Forgotten History”, Faculty of Arts
and Social Sciences Funded Project, Lancaster University
 
 

Conference organisation:

Jul. 2025: Organisation of four panels for “Medieval Sicily and the Mediterranean”, (International Medieval Congress, Leeds University)

 
Jul. 2024: Organisation of four panels for “Medieval Sicily and the Mediterranean”, (International Medieval Congress, Leeds University)
 
2020: Congress Officer for the International Medieval Congress, Leeds University
 
Jul. 2018: Organisation of four panels for “Norman Southern Italy”, (International Medieval Congress, Leeds University)
Page editor: Alexander Antonius Veeser
Letzte Änderung: 30.12.2024
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