My research focusses on medieval social history, extending one way to economic history and archaeology, the other way to cultural history and political action. I am interested in the way societies work and change as systems, and in how people deal with that change. My next projects are a general book on medieval Europe for Yale, and then a book on the eleventh-century Mediterranean.
- Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College (from 2016)
- Chichele Professor of Medieval History (from 2005 to 2016)
- University Academic Fellow, All Souls College (from 2005 to 2016)
- Senior Lecturer (1987), Reader (1988), and from 1995 Professor of Early Medieval History, University of Birmingham (from 1997 to 2005)
- Undergraduate and Postgraduate, Keble College, Oxford (from 1968 to 1975)
- Medieval Italy, c.400-1250, with a regional focus on Tuscany and on central Italy more generally
- Early medieval Europe and the Mediterranean
- Gossip, memory, oral culture, legal practice
- History and archaeology
- Sleepwalking into a new world (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
- Roma medievale (Rome: Viella, 2013) = Medieval Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London: Allen Lane, 2009).
- Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
- Legge, pratiche e conflitti. La risoluzione delle dispute nella Toscana del XII secolo (Rome: Libreria Editrice Viella, 2000). Translated into English as Courts and conflict in twelfth-century Tuscany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
- Comunità e clientele nella Toscana del XII secolo (Rome: Viella, 1995). Translated as Community and Clientele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) and Communautés et clientèles (Rennes: Association d'histoire des sociétés rurales, 2001).
- The Mountains and the City (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; Italian translation: Turin, 1997).
- (with J.W. Fentress), Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
- Land and Power in Early Medieval Europe (London: British School at Rome, 1994).
- Early Medieval Italy (London: Macmillan, 1981; Italian translation: Milan, 1982).
- Académie royale de Belgique
- Keble College (Honorary fellow)
- Accademia dei Lincei