Dr Robert Gallagher

Dr Robert Gallagher studied at the Universities of York and Cambridge, and has since held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Cambridge, the Basque Country, and Oxford. He joined the University of Kent in January 2019. 

Robert is a historian of early medieval Britain, particularly Anglo-Saxon England. Much of his current research focuses on uses of the written word, multilingualism, and cultural and political identities in early medieval societies. These themes lie at the heart of the book that he is completing on the kingdoms of Mercia, Wessex and Kent in the ninth and early tenth centuries, which is called Writing the Realm: the Written Word and the Rise of Wessex, c. 830–920.  

More generally, Robert passionately advocates for interdisciplinary approaches to the past. As a result, Robert works with a wide variety of texts and objects, including charters, letters, Latin verse, liturgy, manuscripts, and inscribed objects. He believes that comparison between such materials offers some of the most exciting lines of enquiry for transforming our understandings of early medieval societies and the cultural artefacts that they produced. 

Robert primarily teaches early medieval topics at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Robert would be keen to hear from anyone interested in researching topics related to early medieval Britain, Anglo-Saxon England, medieval textual cultures and Medieval Latin literature.

Robert is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the editorial team of Canterbury Cathedral’s Picture This project. He also sits on the international advisory board of Fontes Anglo-Saxonici.