HLGC Seminar Series - 'The European Context of the Early Medieval English Laws'

Speaker: Dr Ingrid Ivarsen, University of Cambridge

Chair: Dr Sarah White, University of Nottingham

Abstract: The early medieval English laws have had a long history of study. Scholars have seen them as vestiges of a hazy pre-historic Germanic culture and as part of England’s unique ‘ancient constitution’. Their study has been inextricably tied in with both German and English nationalism. Aspects of these (mainly) nineteenth-century interpretations have lingered in the scholarship. Anglo-Saxon laws are still liable to be treated as unique and insular documents on the one hand and, on the other, as representatives of the dubious category ‘Germanic law’. Neither interpretation captures the full picture. In this talk, I present my project, ‘The European context of the Anglo-Saxon laws’, and show some examples of how we can continue to move the study of these laws away from their Germanicist and insularizing contexts, interpreting them instead as part of the vibrant legislative culture of western Europe in the post-Roman period.

Speaker Bio: Dr Ingrid Ivarsen is a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College Cambridge, a position which she took up after completing her PhD at the University of St Andrews. Her research so far has focused on the laws issued in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms between c. 600 and 1020, and in particular the relationship between the text of the laws and the process that produced them.

ALL STAFF AND STUDENTS ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND THIS GUEST SEMINAR!