Notes on Contributors
Janna Bianchini
is Associate Professor of the European High Middle Ages at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include the history of power, women, and religious conflict, particularly in medieval Christian Iberia. She has held fellowships from the Fulbright Association, the Medieval Academy of America, the American Historical Association, the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain and United States Universities, and the Real Colegio Complutense. She is the author of The Queen’s Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile, among other publications. She knew Simon Barton since she was a graduate student, when Simon generously offered his advice and encouragement for her project. Her research on prosopography and social networks among the western Iberian elite was profoundly influenced by Simon Barton’s seminal study, The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile, and her interests in gender and power align with Barton’s work on similar themes in his last book, Conquerors, Brides and Concubines.
Jerrilynn D. Dodds
is Harlequin Adair Dammann Professor at Sarah Lawrence College (New York). Her work has centred on issues of artistic interchange—in particular, among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval Iberia—and how groups form identities through art and architecture. She is the author of Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain and NY Masjid: The Mosques of New York and co-author of Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, among other publications. She was a friend of Simon Barton, with whom she shared numerous research interests and academic experiences.
Simon R. Doubleday
is Professor of History at Hofstra University, and a specialist in the history of medieval Spain. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship. His books include The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance, and The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain. He has co-edited books including Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice, In the Light of Medieval Spain: Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past, and Border Interrogations: Questioning Spanish Frontiers. He recently recorded a video lecture series entitled After the Plague. He was Founding Editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, an initiative that developed partly out of conversations with his friend Simon Barton, and has also served as president of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS).
Ana Echevarría Arsuaga
is Professor of Medieval History in the Department of Medieval History and Palaeography at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Spain. She works on queenship and relations between Muslims and Christians (especially interreligious polemics, Muslims living under Christian rule, conversion and crusade), in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean. She also led the project “Christian Society under Muslim Rule: Canon Collections from Medieval Spain” funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Being the same generation as Simon Barton, both met at several conferences and pursued similar academic endeavours, and she reviewed some of his publications for academic journals in Spain and abroad. She is a member of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, through which she also collaborated with Simon Barton, who was the Society’s President between 2013 and 2017.
Maribel Fierro
is Research Professor at the Institute for the Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean—Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). She has published extensively on the political, religious and intellectual history of the pre-modern Islamic West (al-Andalus and North Africa). She shared with Simon Barton his interest on the social aspects of interfaith relations in the Iberian Peninsula.
Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo
is Associate Professor of Medieval History in the School of Humanities and Heritage at the University of Lincoln (UK). She specialises in medieval Iberian social and cultural history, with a particular focus on thirteenth-century Castile and Aragon. Her areas of research include the study of medieval friendship, social communication and cultural networks, trust and diplomacy, transcultural collaborations, and the History of Emotions. She is the author of the monograph Friendship in Medieval Iberia: Historical, Legal and Literary Perspectives, among other publications. She was Simon Barton’s first PhD student and was elected President of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean to succeed him in 2018.
Fernando Luis Corral
is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Salamanca. Focusing on social and political history, he specialises in the study of the exercise of power in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. His main lines of research include the study of the relationships involving the monarchy, the aristocracy and local societies, and how these dynamics affected territorial organisation and administration. He is also interested in the demystification of the medieval past. Between 2008 and 2010, he directed the research project “The exercise of power in the kingdoms of León and Castile in the Middle Ages” (SA085A08), collaborating with Simon Barton as a member of his research team. Through the Erasmus Programme, he was also involved in Teaching Staff mobility activities in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, under the supervision of Simon Barton.
Therese Martin
is Senior Researcher in Medieval Art History at the Instituto de Historia of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, Madrid). Her research and extensive list of publications investigate the intersections of medieval Iberia’s multiple cultures; women as vectors of cross-cultural exchange in the central Middle Ages; the geographic resonances of treasured objects; and Romanesque construction and decoration. She first met Simon Barton in the 1990s when both were PhD students, and they quickly became friends and colleagues, collaborating both formally and informally through the succeeding years.
Iñaki Martín Viso
is Professor of Medieval History in the Department of Medieval, Early Modern and Modern History at the University of Salamanca. His research focuses on the study of rural societies and landscapes in the early Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula, using written and archaeological records. He is a member of the Research Group Antigüedad Tardía y Alta Edad Media en Hispania (ATAEMHIS) and he is the Principal Investigator of the Research Project ESMICRO (Los escenarios de las micropolíticas (siglos VI–XII): acción colectiva, sociedades locales, poderes englobantes) founded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. They met when Simon Barton visited the University of Salamanca, and since then they continued collaborating, sharing a common interest in medieval Iberian social history.
Amy G. Remensnyder
is Giancarlo Family Provost’s Professor of History at Brown University. In her first book, she focused on high medieval French monastic culture and collective memory. Her next book spanned the Atlantic, placing medieval Iberia in dialogue with colonial Mexico. A practitioner of engaged scholarship, she is the founder and director of the Brown History Education Prison Project. Her current research interests focus on piracy, slavery, deserted islands, and maritime religion, which she is exploring by writing a longue durée micro-history of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa between 1200 and 1700. She was lucky to have Simon Barton as a close colleague and good friend.
Maya Soifer Irish
is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program at Rice University. Her research focuses on religious violence and toleration, and explores the legal, social, and economic situation of religious minorities in Iberian Christian societies. She is the author of Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile: Tradition, Coexistence, and Change. Her research continues to be inspired by Simon Barton’s work on interfaith relations in Iberia, and she has successfully used his books in the classroom. Soifer Irish has served as President of the Fourteenth Century Society, President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, and President of the Texas Medieval Association.
Teresa Tinsley
obtained her PhD in History from the University of Exeter in 2019 under the supervision of Simon Barton, building on a long career in languages research and education. Her research focuses on the conflicts, controversies and preoccupations which marked the transition from multi-faith Iberia to Catholic Spain. Her academic publications include Reconciliation and Resistance in Early Modern Spain and the co-authored Relación de Hernando de Baeza sobre el Reino de Granada.
Sonia Vital Fernández
was awarded her PhD in History with mention of “Doctor Europeus” from the University of Salamanca. Her research and publications focus on power relations in León and Castile in the twelfth century, and on the complex relationship between the lay aristocracy and King Alfonso VII in a social and political context of feudal organization. Currently, her research areas include the political role of the ‘infantas’ of León and Castile in the central Middle Ages, as well as diplomacy and warfare in the time of Queen Urraca I and King Alfonso VII. In 2007, she carried out part of her research at the University of Exeter, under the supervision of Professor Simon Barton, with whom she also collaborated as a member of the research project “The exercise of power in the kingdoms of León and Castile in the Middle Ages” (SA085A08).
Alun Williams
is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He is the first scholar to hold the position of Research Fellow at the Society of the Medieval Mediterranean. He obtained his PhD under the supervision of Simon Barton and taught at the University of Exeter from 2007 until his retirement in 2021. His research covers Spanish chronicle writing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and he is especially interested in the use of biblical narrative in the texts that describe conflict between Christians and Muslims as well as between the competing Christian kingdoms in the north of Spain. He was secretary of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean from 2007 to 2019, and associate editor of the Society’s house journal, Al-Masāq, between 2007 and 2017.
Teresa Witcombe
is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. Prior to this, she held a Leverhulme Trust postdoctoral scholarship in Madrid, where she was affiliated with the CSIC-CCHS, and was an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London. She works on the cultural and intellectual history of medieval Iberia, in particular, the Church and society of thirteenth-century Castile, the Arabic-Latin translation movement, and the exchange of ideas and people across borders. She has published widely on these themes, and co-edited a study of the reign of King Fernando III of Castile, published by Brill in 2020. She wrote her PhD thesis on the thirteenth-century prelate Bishop Maurice of Burgos, under the supervision of Simon Barton at the University of Exeter.
Jamie Wood
is Professor of Education and History in the School of Humanities and Heritage at the University of Lincoln (UK), where he has taught since 2013. He has published extensively on the historical writings of Isidore of Seville, bishops in Visigothic Hispania, and the social functions of violence in late antiquity. His current project explores political, economic, and religious connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the Byzantine world in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. He has many fond memories of working alongside Simon Barton on the board of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean for several years.