Dr Richard Sowerby (MA (Hons), MLitt, DPhil)

Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval History

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 00M.24, William Robertson Wing, Old Medical School, Teviot Place

City
Post code

Availability

  • Student drop-in hours: 11:15-1:15 on Mondays in weeks 2-5, then on Tuesdays in weeks 6-11
    Cohort lead consultation hours: 10:00-11:00 on Thursdays (in person) and Fridays 9:30-10:30 (online - email to set up a meeting link)

Biography

Background

I grew up in North Yorkshire, where the seeds of my interest in the Middle Ages were probably planted by days out at Fountains Abbey down the road. A few summers spent in the company of the York Archaeological Trust did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm, and I headed north to study Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. I stayed there for five years, then went to the University of Oxford to write a doctoral thesis about imaginary creatures.

I was lucky to be able spend the next few years first as a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford, and then as the Osborn Fellow in Medieval History and Culture at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 2015, I returned to Scotland to join the School of History, Classics and Archaeology here in Edinburgh.

Responsibilities & affiliations

Dissertation Coordinator for History (2025-27)

Cohort Lead (undergraduate students: History year 4)

External Examiner at Lancaster University (2021–28)

Undergraduate teaching

I am the course organiser for the following courses:

  • Medicine and Health in the early Middle Ages (Honours: special subject)
  • The Kings in the North: Scotland in the Early Middle Ages (Honours: elective)

I also give lectures, tutorials or pathways on the following courses:

  • Medieval Worlds: A Journey through the Middle Ages (pre-Honours: lectures and tutorials)
  • The History of Edinburgh: From Din Eidyn to Festival City (pre-Honours: lectures)
  • The Transformation of the Roman World, ca. 300–800: Towards Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (pre-Honours: lectures)
  • Historical Skills and Methods I (Honours: pathway on the historiography of the end of the Roman Empire)
  • Historical Skills and Methods II (Honours: pathway on medieval visions of the afterlife)

Postgraduate teaching

  • Body and Soul in Early Medieval Thought (MSc option: all seminars)
  • Before Scotland: The Transformation of Northern Britain in the First Millennium CE (MSc online option: all seminars)
  • Historical Methodology (MSc: pathway on medieval manuscripts)

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students who are interested in pursuing further work on any aspect of early medieval social and cultural history. Projects which intend to deal with matters of religion, belief, healing or medicine are especially welcome, as are studies into the cults of saints in the early Middle Ages.

Current PhD students supervised

Hayley Boulton, 'The social and cultural contexts of gynaecological texts in the early medieval West, c. 700-1000' (co-supervising with Dr Zubin Mistry)

Nick Cartwright, 'The dynamics of sainthood: comparative analysis in hagiographic studies of Saint Cuthbert and the Bodhisattva Gyoki' (co-supervising with Dr Abigail MacBain)

Joseph Fenwick, 'Spinning the fabric of fate: household ritual, femininity and magic in Viking Age Scandinavia' (co-supervising with Dr Alan MacNiven)

Research summary

My research focuses on the social and cultural history of early medieval Europe (c. 500-1100 CE). My work seeks to better understand the ways that early medieval men and women thought about the world in which they lived, and to explore the way that their beliefs, ideas and values changed during the first millennium CE.

My published work deals chiefly with religious culture of the period, and has examined subjects such as beliefs about angels, speculation about the creation of the world, theories about the fate of the dead, and the veneration of saints. My current research seeks to develop new understandings of medieval systems of healing, focusing especially on the place of animals in medieval healing practices, to investigate both the ways in which animals were cared for and the ways that they themselves were implicated in the processes of human medicine.

Affiliated research centres

Books:

"Natural and Supernatural in Early Medieval England" (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

"Angels in Early Medieval England" (Oxford University Press, 2016) [Awarded the Ecclesiastical History Society Book Prize, and the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England Best First Book Prize. Shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize.]

Articles and chapters:

'Health, medicine and spirits', in Zubin Mistry and Ahmed Ragab (eds.), "The Cambridge History of Medicine. Volume II: Medieval Medicine, c. 600–1500" (Cambridge University Press: forthcoming)

'When medicine doesn't work: making sense of failure in the early Middle Ages', in Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Zubin Mistry (eds.), "Ecologies of Healing in the Premodern World" (Edinburgh University Press: forthcoming)

'Sainthood', in Fiona Edmonds and Rory Naismith (eds.), "The New Cambridge History of Britain. Volume I: Early Medieval Britain, c. 410–c. 1100" (Cambridge University Press: forthcoming)

'The "Second Synod of St Patrick" and the "Romans" of the early Irish Church', "Traditio" 78 (2023), 47–78

'The heirs of Bishop Wilfrid: succession and presumption in early Anglo-Saxon England', "English Historical Review" 134, no. 571 (2019), 1377–1404

'A family and its saint in the Vita prima Samsonis', in Lynette Olson (ed.), "St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales" (Boydell and Brewer, 2017), pp. 19–36

'The Lives of St Samson: rewriting the ambitions of an early medieval cult', "Francia" 38 (2011), 1–31

‘Hengest and Horsa: the manipulation of history and myth from the "adventus Saxonum" to "Historia Brittonum"’, "Nottingham Medieval Studies" 51 (2007), 1–19

Translations: 

‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’, ‘Walter Map’ and ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, in Laura Ashe (ed.), "Early Fiction in England: From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Chaucer" (Penguin, 2015)

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