People

Research and Engagement Team

Alex Metcalfe Principal Investigator	Alex Metcalfe is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Lancaster University. He has been Visiting Professor and/or Research Fellow at the University of Cagliari; the Jagiellonian University in Krakow; ISEM-CNR in Cagliari; Wolfson College, Oxford; the Oriental Institute and Khalili Research Centre, Oxford, as well as the universities of Cyprus in Nicosia, Aarhus in Denmark, and Ca’ Fóscari in Venice. Alex is best known for his work on Muslim-Christian relations in the medieval Mediterranean, especially in Sicily and south Italy. Follow Alex on Academia.edu.
Thomas Birch International Co-Investigator	Tom Birch is an Archaeometallurgist at the Archaeological Science and Conservation Section of Moesgaard Museum (Denmark). He focuses on the study of material culture and technology, and has reconstructed silver networks by provenancing some of the earliest silver coinage from the western Mediterranean using isotopic and chemical techniques. Before joining Moesgaard Museum, Tom was Assistant Professorship at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) in Aarhus (Denmark), collaborating on several projects ranging from Viking metals from the first town in Scandinavia to copper alloys and coinage during the transition from Late Roman/Byzantine to early Islamic periods in the Near East.
Luciano Gallinari International Co-Investigator	Luciano Gallinari is a researcher at the Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea of the National Research Council (CNR) and the Editor-in-chief of “RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediteranea”. He is also responsible for several international research projects including: “E pluribus unum. Il profilo identitario sardo dal Medioevo alla Contemporaneità”, funded by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (2015–2018), and “Intercultural influence between East and West: 11th–21st centuries”, with the participation of ASRT (Academy for Scientific Research and Techonology, Egypt), CNR and the Universities of Damanhour and Alexandria (Egypt). He is author of numerous essays on the relations between the Crown of Aragon and Italy (XIII-XV centuries), on Byzantine and Giudicati Sardinia (6th–11th centuries).
Hervin Fernández-Aceves Postdoctoral Research Associate	Hervin Fernández-Aceves is a medievalist and historian working on Mediterranean societies, Italian historiography and medieval charters. He began his postdoctoral research on Medieval Sardinia, first as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds’ Arts and Humanities Research Institute, and then as an Award-holder at the British School at Rome. Hervin has published works investigating conquest, aristocratic power, prosopography, digital humanities, and the socio-political history of pre-modern societies, including his monograph County and Nobility in Norman Italy (London, 2020). His research interests lie in the intersection of relational sociology, Mediterranean history and medieval studies.
Marco Muresu Postdoctoral Research Associate	Marco Muresu is an archaeologist at the universities of Lancaster and Cagliari. He is a member of the Editorial board of the scientific journal, ArcheoArte, and the section Editor-in-chief of the medieval section of the journal, Layers. Archeologia, territorio, contesti. Marco’s primary scientific interests focus on the Byzantine western Mediterranean, primarily Sardinia on which he is an expert in metal artefacts and coins from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages. In 2019, he was awarded the 24th ‘Premio Cimitile’ Prize for the best book on Christian and Medieval Archaeology published in Italy. He also held a Research Award at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection during the same year. He has published a multitude of articles and two monographs.
Nina Bumbálková Film-maker and photographer	Nina Bumbálková is an independent film-maker and photographer based in London. With degrees in Photography from Prague and London, she has a decade of experience in the film and photography industry. Nina’s documentary film-work, as both writer and director, includes ‘Men in a Box’ (2017), a critically well received and thought-provoking portrait of a boxing club which has been screened in the UK and abroad. Her photography has been exhibited in London, Prague, and New York.
Maurizio Virdis Sardinian language specialist	Maurizio Virdis is Professor (Emeritus) of Romance Philology and Sardinian Linguistics at the University of Cagliari. His research has a focus on the historical and synchronic description of Sardinian phonetics and syntax and of modern Sardinian poetry. He is also known for his publications on, and critical editions of, medieval texts in Sardinian, including Il Condaghe di Santa Maria di Bonarcado (Cagliari, 2002), Il sardo medioevale: tra sociolinguistica storica e ricostruzione linguistico-culturale (with G. Paulis and I. Putzu, Milan, 2018), and La Sardegna e la sua lingua. Studi e saggi (Milan, 2019).

Project Scientific Committee

Martin Carver Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of York	Martin Carver is a Fellow of the British Academy, and has carried out archaeological field research on early medieval towns (1975-1985) and has led campaigns of research, excavation and evaluation at Stafford (England), Castel Seprio (Italy), Achir (Algeria) and towns in southern France. He led excavations and survey research at the 7th-century princely burial ground of Sutton Hoo (1983–2005) and discovered and excavated the first monastery of the Picts at Portmahomack, NE Scotland, 6th–9th century (1996–2007). Martin was Editor of the journal Antiquity from 2002–2012, and was appointed Professor Emeritus in 2008.
Rossana Martorelli Professor of Medieval and Christian Archaeology, University of Cagliari	Rossana Martorelli is Professore Ordinario di Archeologia cristiana e medievale in the Dipartimento di Lettere, Lingue e Beni Culturali at Cagliari University. She has been responsible for numerous and important excavations over more than twenty years, giving rise to numerous milestones publications on the archaeology of early medieval and Christian Sardinia. Among Rossana’s most important works is Martiri e devozione nella Sardegna altomedievale e medievale (Cagliari, 2012). She has also edited key collected volumes on Sardinian medieval history and archaeology, such as Settecento-millecento. Storia, archeologia e arte nei ‘secoli bui’ del Mediterraneo (Cagliari, 2013), and the series of Archeologia urbana a Cagliari.
Patricia Murrieta-Flores Professor in Digital Humanities, Lancaster University	Patricia Murrieta-Flores is the Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Hub at Lancaster University. She is the PI on the Transatlantic Platform (T-AP) funded project ‘Digging into Early Colonial Mexico: A large-scale computational analysis of 16th-century historical sources’. Patricia has edited and contributed to multiple books on Digital Humanities, Cultural Heritage, the use of GIS and other technologies in Archaeology, History, and Literature, and has published multiple articles exploring theories and methodologies related to space and place. Her interest lies in the application of technologies for Humanities and my primary research area is the Spatial Humanities.
Manuela Puddu Administrator of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Cagliari	Manuela Puddu holds a doctorate in Archaeology from the University of Cagliari. She is best known for her curatorial work at the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, and for her promotion of Public History on the island. She is the author of numerous works on Bronze Age Sardinia, including the co-edited volume, Sardinia Megalithic Island: From Menhirs to Nuraghi. Stories of Stone in the Heart of the Mediterranean (2021). As a specialist in Sardinian history and material culture, her wide range of research interests include the Roman, Greek and Christian Mediterranean.
Federica Sulas Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden	Federica Sulas is a Geoarchaeologist and Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg (Sweden). Prior to this, she was Senior Research Associate at the Department of Archaeology in Cambridge, and has held teaching and research posts in the UK, Spain, Italy (Sardinia), South Africa, and Denmark. Her research focuses on landscape, historical ecology, resource practices, especially with regard to water.
Chris Wickham Chichele Professor of Medieval History (Emeritus), University of Oxford	Chris Wickham was Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Fellow of the British Academy. He has worked on a range of topics in medieval history, including urban histories of Italy up to the early thirteenth century, comparative history of socio-economic and socio-political patterns, socio-legal history, the study of social memory in Europe, and the interface between history and archaeology. His current research focuses on the Mediterranean in a long eleventh century and the development of exchange/commercial patterns in that period, from Spain to Egypt. He employs archaeology, legal documents and letters to explain how regional exchange fits together with long-distance exchange. He aims not only to show how the Mediterranean economy worked in this period, but also how the logic(s) of pre-capitalist economic systems operated on the ground.