Svenmeeder.nl

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From August next I will be a researcher and lecturer of Medieval History at Utrecht University. My research focuses on the interplay between identity, scholarship, and politics in the early Middle Ages, and will be undertaken within the international project ‘Cultural memory and the resources of the past, 400-1000 AD’, funded as a HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) Joint Research Programme.

Currently, I am working on the interplay between the notion of a Bavarian identity and the burgeoning tradition of scholarship in eighth- and ninth-century Bavaria. I am particularly interested in the ways in which a (politically motivated) sense of identity shaped the dissemination of ideas and learning.

This research involves detailed manuscript and textual study, including a critical edition of the intriguing eighth-century collection of canon law, known as the Collectio 400 Capitulorum.

I was previously a PhD candidate at the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge and a member of Trinity College, working with Prof Rosamond McKitterick.  My PhD thesis concerns the spread and reception of works of Irish learning on the Continent in the eighth and ninth centuries. This research includes the study (and edition) of the Hiberno-Latin text known as the Liber ex lege Moysi and the continental reception of the Irish attitude towards Old Testament Law; the self-image of ‘Irish foundations’ on the Continent; and the earliest spread of the Collectio canonum Hibernensis.