Professor Charles West

Professor of Medieval History

Biography

Background

After a History degree in Cambridge, an MPhil in Birmingham and a PhD again in Cambridge, I spent a year in Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow, before moving to Sheffield for a lectureship in the Department of History in 2008. I taught and researched in Sheffield for fifteen years, and was promoted to a professorship in 2022, before coming to Edinburgh in 2023. I have also held visiting positions at the universities of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College) in the UK, and Münster and Tübingen in Germany.

Responsibilities & affiliations

Co-ordinating Editor, Early Medieval Europe

Editorial Board, Reti Medievali Rivista

Editorial Board, Revue bénédictine

Collective, History Workshop Journal

Member, University of Edinburgh Student Discipline Committee

Undergraduate teaching

Courses I teach on include:

Medieval Worlds: a Journey through the Middle Ages (HIST08035): first-year course

The Doomed Kingdom: Power, Law and Religion in Early Medieval Europe (HIST10495): Honours Elective

Charlemagne's Europe, c. 750 - 825 (HIST10512): Final year Special Subject

Dissertations. I have supervised many undergraduate dissertations on a wide range of topics, such as the body in early English law codes, the political thought of Archbishop Hincmar of Reims, moustaches in the Bayeux Tapestry, and war crimes in the Scottish Wars of Independence. Please get in touch if you have a potential project you'd like to discuss.

Postgraduate teaching

Crowdsourcing the Past: Wikipedia and Cultural Heritage (EFIE11440) - elective for the MSc in Cultural Heritage

Charlemagne and the End of Antiquity (PGHC11634) - elective for the online MSc in History

Postgraduate Masters supervision. I have supervised History postgraduate dissertations on a range of topics, from Roman Richborough and Frankish miracles to Norman identity and Carolingian manuscripts. I have also supervised student projects on the MSc in Cultural Heritage, on topics including contemporary pilgrimage routes in southern Italy and the methodology of studying intangible cultural heritage. Please get in touch if you have a potential project you'd like to discuss.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I enjoy PhD supervision, and have acted as lead supervisor to several successfully completed PhD theses. I welcome PhD applications that relate directly or indirectly to my expertise in continental European history, c. 600 to c. 1200.

Please bear in mind that familiarity with Latin and a modern European language (as well as English) is usually needed before starting a PhD in this field.

Current PhD students supervised

Chenlin Zhang (visiting from Peking University)

Past PhD students supervised

Riccardo Zardin (visiting from Rome, 'Tor Vergata'), 2024

James Chetwood, 'Tom, Dick and Leofric: The Transformation of English Personal Naming, c.800–c.1300', 2012-2016

Richard Gilbert, 'Power, Community and the Manor Court in Sixteenth-Century English Society', 2018-2022

Alex Traves, 'Kinship in Early Medieval England, AD 600 - 1050', 2018-2022

Tianpeng Zhang, 'Social Crisis and Temporalities in Thinking: A Comparative Study of Einhard, Dhuoda and Nithard, 817–843', 2020-2024

Research summary

I am a historian of European cultures and societies c. 600-1200, with a particular focus on Carolingian Francia and its successor states. Alongside my single-authored research, I enjoy working in collaboration with colleagues, both in the UK and internationally. 

Underpinning my research is a methodological interest in change in ideas and practices of public order. As well as writing about this issue directly, I have explored it through three interlocking themes:

  • the relationship between religious and secular fields of activity. For instance, how ecclesiastical norms shaped royal and aristocratic authority, how secular elites sought to harness the economic resources of religious institutions, and how ecclesiastical actors asserted and defended their autonomy. 
  • local society and its relation to hegemonic authority. This encompasses the study of peasant groups and local elites such as priests, who served as intermediaries between the rural population and the Church hierarchy. 
  • comparison at regional, regnal, European and Eurasian scales of analysis. I have used comparison to shed light on topics ranging from the varied pace of political fragmentation to the diverse mechanisms for integrating ascetic communities into wider society.

Current research interests

Histories of simony and corruption; the Carolingian Empire; the global medieval peasantry

Affiliated research centres

Project activity

My research has been supported by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Humboldt Foundation.

Current collaborative projects

Past project grants

• 'Priests in a Post-Imperial World': AHRC/DFG Research Grant, 2021–2024, AH/V002317/1
• 'Europe in the Eleventh Century': British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, 2022–23, MF21\210114
• 'Humbert of Moyenmoutier and his “Letter Book”: Eleventh-Century Church Reform between the Local and the Trans-European': Humboldt Foundation Experienced Researcher Fellowship, 2014–2016
• 'Turbulent Priests. The Problem of Royal Jurisdiction over Clerics, c. 600 – c.1200': AHRC Leadership Fellowship, 2014–2016, AH/L010623/1

Books

Single-authored

Europe in the Eleventh Century. Beyond Revolution and Reform, Oxford History of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025)

The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom: Lotharingia, 855-869 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023) 

Reframing the Feudal Revolution. Political and Social Transformation between Marne and Moselle, c. 800–1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, 90 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Co-written

Local Priests in the Latin West, 900–1050, co-written with Alice Hicklin, Steffen Patzold and Bastiaan Waagmeester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025)

Neighbours or Strangers? Local Societies in Early Medieval Europe, co-written with Bernhard Zeller, Francesca Tinti, Marco Stoffella, Nicolas Schroeder, Carine van Rhijn, Steffen Patzold, Thomas Kohl, Wendy Davies, and Miriam Czock (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020) 

Capetian France 987–1328, co-written with Elizabeth Hallam (3rd edition, London: Routledge, 2019) 

The Divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga: Hincmar of Rheims’s De Divortio, translated and annotated with Rachel Stone, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016)

Edited collections

Writing the Early Medieval West: Studies in Honour of Rosamond McKitterick, edited with Elina Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) 

Hincmar of Rheims. Life and Work, edited with Rachel Stone (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015)

Special Issues

Religious Exemption in Pre-Modern Eurasia, 300-1300, Medieval Worlds 6 (2017) https:doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no6_2017

Articles

  1. 'Laymen and Church Reform Around the Year 1000: a Reflection', Journal of Medieval History 51 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2025.2519769
  2. ‘The Earliest Form and Function of the “Admonitio synodalis”’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 57 (2023), 347–380 https://doi.org/10.1515/fmst-2023-0019

  3. ‘The Simony Crisis of the Eleventh Century and the Epistola Widonis’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 73 (2022), 229–253  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046921000063

  4. ‘Three Notes on Alessio Fiore’s Seigneurial Transformation’, Journal of European Economic History 50:3 (2021), 203–213

  5. ‘Pope Leo of Bourges, Clerical Immunity and the Early Medieval Secular’, Early Medieval Europe 29 (2021), 86–108 https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12450
  6. (with Giorgia Vocino) ‘“On the Life and Continence of Judges”: the Production and Preservation of Imperial Legislation in late Ottonian Italy’, Mélanges d’école française de Rome 131:1 (2019), 87–117 https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrm.4763
  7. ‘Bishops between “Reforms” in the long Tenth Century – the case of Verdun’, The Medieval Low Countries 6 (2019), 73–92 https://doi.org/10.1484/J.MLC.5.118363
  8. (with Matthew Innes) ‘Saints and Demons in the Carolingian Countryside’, in ‘Kleine Welten. Ländliche Gesellschaften im Karolingerreich’, ed. Thomas Kohl, Steffen Patzold and Bernhard Zeller, Vorträge und Forschungen 87 (2019), 67–99 https://doi.org/10.11588/vuf.2019.0.85074
  9. ‘Lotharingia viewed from West Frankia’, Publications de la section historique de l’Institut grand-ducale de Luxembourg 126 (2018), 201–217
  10. ‘Quelle place pour l’ecclesia dans l’Europe médiévale?’, Médiévales 74 (2018), 165–178 https://doi.org/10.4000/medievales.8743
  11. ‘Religious Exemption in pre-modern Eurasia, c. 300-1300 – introduction’, Medieval Worlds 6 (2017), 2–7 https://doi:10.1553/medievalworlds_no6_2017s2
  12. ‘Monks, Aristocrats and Justice: Twelfth-Century Monastic Advocacy in a European Perspective’, Speculum 92.2 (2017), 372–404   https://doi.org/10.1086/690661
  13. (With Steven Vanderputten) ‘Inscribing Property, Rituals, and Royal Alliances: The “Theutberga Gospels” and the Abbey of Remiremont’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 124.2 (2016), 296–321 https://doi.org/10.7767/miog-2016-0202 
  14. ‘“Fratres, omni die videtis cum vadit istud regnum in perdicionem”: Abbo of Saint-Germain and the Crisis of 888’, Reti Medievali Rivista 17 (2016) http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/rm/article/view/5007
  15. ‘Visions in a Ninth-Century Village: an early medieval Microhistory’, History Workshop Journal 81 (2016), 1–16​​​​ https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbv040
  16. ‘Knowledge of the Past and the Judgement of History in Tenth-Century Trier: Regino of Prüm and the Lost Manuscript of Adventius of Metz’, Early Medieval Europe 24 (2016), 137–59 https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12138
  17. ‘Lordship in Ninth-Century Francia: The Case of Bishop Hincmar of Laon and his Followers’, Past and Present 226 (2015), 3–40  https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu044
  18. ‘Count Hugh of Troyes and the Territorial Principality in early Twelfth-Century Western Europe’, English Historical Review 127 (2012), 523–548 https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ces080
  19. ‘Unauthorised Miracles in mid-ninth-century Dijon and the Carolingian Church Reforms’, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010), 295–311 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmedhist.2010.09.006
  20. ‘The Significance of the Carolingian Advocate’, Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009), 186–206 (winner of the Early Medieval Europe Essay Prize 2009) https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2009.00259.x

Book chapters

  1. ‘Between the Flood and the Last Judgement: Hincmar of Reims and the Trial by Ordeal’, in Beyond Time and Space: Medieval Studies by and in Memory of Miriam Czock, edited by Matthew Gillis, Anja Rathmann-Lutz and Laury Sarti (Budapest, 2026), pp. 279–290
  2. ‘Archbishop Hraban Maurus, Lothar II and the Roman Army’, in Autorität der Bischöfe, Autorität des Wortes. Études en hommage à Geneviève Bührer-Thierry / Beiträge zu Ehren von Geneviève Bührer-Thierry, ed. Jens Schneider, Isabelle Rosé, Tristan Martine, Thomas Lienhard, Sylvie Joye and Justine Audebrand, Mittelalterstudien vol. 36 (Leiden,  2026), pp. 167-174
  3. ‘“Just as the Law of Moses is the Law of the Jews”: Hincmar of Reims and the legal role of the Bible in late Carolingian Francia’, in The Politics of Interpretation: the Bible and the Formation of Legal Authority in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gerda Heydemann and Rosamond McKitterick (Ostfildern, 2025), pp. 143–160
  4. ‘“This Toll Must be Paid at Koblenz”. Merchants and the 'Feudal Revolution' in the Eleventh-Century Rhineland’, in Power, Local Societies, and Change from the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries, edited by Christoph Haack, Annette Grabowsky and Steffen Patzold (Tübingen, 2025), pp. 147-162
  5. ‘Trade, Coins and Authority in the Eleventh-Century Rhineland: the Toll Tariff of Koblenz’, in Small Change: New Perspectives on Money in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Rory Naismith (Turnhout, 2025), pp. 215–231
  6. ‘Heilige und Gelehrte: Bamberg Stiftsbibliothek, Msc. Hist.162‘, in Des Kaisers neue Bücher. Mittelalterliche Handschriften der Bamberger Kaiser-Heinrich-Bibliothek in 50 Porträts, ed. Bettina Wagner and Christof Rolker (Bamberg, 2024), pp. 130–131
  7. 'A Princess on the Run: Judith's 'Abduction' by Count Baldwin', in Steven Vanderputten, ed., Judith of West Francia, Carolingian Princess and First Countess of Flanders. Biographical Elements and Legacy (Turnhout, 2024), pp. 47-64
  8. ‘Corruption in the Middle Ages and the Problem of Simony’, in Maria Filomena Coelho and Leandro Duerte Rust (eds.), Corruption in pre-modern Societies. Challenges for Historical Interpretations (Brasilia, 2024), pp. 73-90
  9. ‘The Village Imagined: Social Complexity in the Versus de Unibove’, in Social Complexity and the State: The Forms of Governance in Early Medieval Western Europe, ed. Igor Santos Salazar (Bilbao, 2024), pp. 87-98
  10. ‘Paschasius Radbertus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew’, in The Bloomsbury Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations, 600-1500, ed. David Thomas (London, 2022), 228-230
  11. ‘The “Schism of 1054” and the Politics of Church Reform in Lotharingia, c. 1100’, in Thomas Kohl (ed.), Konflikt und Wandel um 1100, Europa im Mittelalter 36 (Berlin 2020), pp. 195-215
  12. ‘“And how, if you are a Christian, can you hate the Emperor?”. Reading a seventh-century Scandal in Carolingian Francia’, in Criticising the ruler in pre-modern societies – possibilities, chances and methods, ed. Karina Kellermann, Alheydis Plassmann and Christian Schwermann (Bonn: V&R Unipress, 2019), pp. 411-430
  13. ‘Royal estates, Confiscation and the Politics of Land in the Kingdom of Otto I’, in Francois Bougard and Vito Loré (eds.), Biens publics, biens du roi. Les bases économiques des pouvoirs royaux dans le haut Moyen Âge, Seminari internazionali del Centro Interuniversitario per la Storia e l’Archeologia dell’Alto Medioevo (2019), pp. 155-175.
  14. ‘Hincmar of Reims’, in Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium, ed. Philip Reynolds (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 429–443.
  15. ‘Carolingian Kingship and the Peasants of Le Mans: the Capitulum in cenomannico pago datum’, in Rolf Grosse and Michel Sot (eds.), Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes. Construction et déconstruction d’un règne, Collection Haut Moyen Age 34 (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 227–245.
  16. ‘From Co-opetition to Competition? Relations between the Laity and the Religious in the Moselle Valley, c. 1050–1120’, in Régine Le Jan, Geneviève Bührer-Thierry and Stefano Gasparri (eds.), Coopétition. Rivaliser, coopérer dans les sociétés du haut Moyen Âge (500-1100), Collection Haut Moyen Age 31 (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 269–281.
  17. ‘“Dissonance of Speech, Consonance of Meaning” – the Council of Aachen (862) and the Transmission of Carolingian Conciliar Records’, in Elina Screen and Charles West (eds), Writing the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 169–182.
  18. ‘Hincmar’s Parish Priests’, in Rachel Stone and Charles West (eds.), Hincmar of Rheims, Life and Work (Manchester, 2015), pp. 228–246.
  19. ‘Competing for the Holy Spirit: Humbert of Moyenmoutier and the Question of Simony’, in Francois Bougard, Philippe Depreux and Régine Le Jan (eds.), Compétition et sacré au haut Moyen Âge: entre médiation et exclusion (Brepols, Collection du Haut Moyen Age: Turnhout, 2015), pp. 327–340
  20. ‘Le saint, le charpentier et le prêtre: l’Apparitio Sancti Vedasti et les élites dans la Francia du IXe siècle’, in Laurent Jégou, Sylvie Joye, Thomas Lienhard and Jens Schneider (eds.), Faire lien. Réseaux, aristocratie et échange compétitif au Moyen Âge. Mélanges en l’honneur de Régine Le Jan (Paris, 2015), pp. 237–245
  21. ‘Group Formation in the Long Tenth Century: a View from Trier and its Region’, in Christine Kleinjung and Stefan Albrecht (eds.), Das lange 10. Jahrhundert – Struktureller Wandel zwischen Zentralisierung und Fragmentierung, äußerem Druck und innerer Krise (Mainz, 2015), pp. 49–59.
  22. ‘Meaning and Context: Moringus the Lay Scribe and Charter Formulation in late-Carolingian Burgundy’, in Jon Jarrett and Allen McKinley (eds.), Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval charters (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 71–87.
  23. ‘All in the Same Boat? East Anglia, the North Sea World and the 1147 Expedition to Lisbon’, in David Bates and Robert Liddiard (eds.), East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, August 2013), pp. 287–300.
  24. ‘Dynastic Historical Writing’ [Byzantium, China and the Latin West], in Sarah Foot and Chase Robinson (eds.), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Volume II: 600–1400 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 496–516
  25. ‘Evaluating Conflict at Court: a West Frankish perspective’, in Matthias Becher and Alheydis Plassmann (eds.), Streit am Hof im frühen Mittelalter (Göttingen, 2011), pp. 317–330
  26. ‘Principautés et territoires, comtes et comtés’, in Michèle Gaillard, Michel Margue, Alain Dierkens and Herold Pettiau (eds.), De la Mer du Nord à la Méditerranée. Francia Media, une région au cœur de l’Europe (c. 840 – c. 1050) (Luxembourg, 2011), pp. 131–150
  27. ‘Legal Culture in Tenth-Century Lotharingia’, in Conrad Leyser, David Rollason and Hannah Williams (eds.), England and the Continent in the Tenth Century (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 351–375
  28.  ‘Urban Populations and Associations’, in Julia Crick and Elisabeth van Houts (eds.), A social history of England, 900-1200 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 198–207
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