Professor Emeritus Barbara Yorke

Biography

Barbara Yorke is Emeritus Professor of Early Medieval History. She gained her BA in History and Archaeology and her PhD from Exeter University. Since has been a member of the University of Winchester's History team since 1977, first as a Lecturer, then as a Reader.

An internationally recognised expert in Anglo-Saxon Winchester and Wessex,  and she will be one of the University experts joining Prof. Michael Wood for the event 'The Legacy of Alfred: the Anglo-Saxons and the birth of England', which will take place at the Winchester Discovery Centre on 12 Sept 2018. Find out more. She delivered a keynote lecture at the 2017 conference 'Winchester, a Medieval Royal City', hosted by the University (find out more), and played a key role in the high-profile project The Search for Alfred the Great, a collaboration between the University and Hyde900.

She has been a member of the Advisory Board of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2006-09); an advisor to the Leverhulme Trust-funded Anglo-Saxon Assemblies project (Director Prof. Andrew Reynolds, UCL 2009-12); a member of the Advisory Panel for the Staffordshire Hoard (2014-16) and an advisor to the Leverhulme Trust-funded Travel and Transport in Anglo-Saxon England project (Director Prof. Andrew Reynolds, UCL, 2015-18). She was guest curator of the exhibition ‘King Alfred: Warfare, Wealth and Wisdom’ at Winchester Discovery Centre (2008).

She is Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. 

Publications

Recent book chapters

• ‘Historical background’, in Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: Derbyshire and Staffordshire, ed. Janes Hawkes and Philip Sidebotham (British Academy 2018)
• Power and Place in Europe in the First Millennium AD, joint editor with Jayne Carroll and Andrew Reynolds (British Academy, 2019)
• ‘Historical Context’ in Blackmore, L, Blair, I, Hirst, S, and Scull, C, in The Prittlewell princely burial: excavations at Priory Crescent, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 2003, MOLA Monogr Ser, London, 2019
• ‘Historical background’, in Dickinson, T, Fern, C and Webster, L (eds), The Staffordshire Hoard (Society of Antiquaries monograph, 2019)
• ‘Cnut and Winchester’, in Aethelred iI and Cnut:: Papers from the Millenary Conference Commemorating the Siege of London 1016 , ed. R. North, A. Finlay, E. Goeres (Kalamazoo institute of Medieval Studies, Northern World series, 2019)

Books

• Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1990)
• Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 1995)
• Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London,2003)
• The Conversion of Britain: Religion, Society and Politics 600-800 (Harlow, 2006)

Recent articles

• ‘Anglo-Saxon Origin Legends’, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters. Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. J. Barrow and A. Wareham (Aldershot, 2008), 15-30
• 'The Women in King Edgar’s Life’, in Edgar, King of the English, 959-975, ed. Donald Scragg, Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (Boydell, 2008), 143-57
• 'Adomnán at the court of King Aldfrith’, in Adomnán of Iona. Theologian, Lawmaker,Peacemaker, ed. J. Wooding et al (Dublin, 2010), pp. 36-50
• ‘The representation of early West Saxon history in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Language, Literature and History, ed. A. Jorgens (Turnhout 2010), pp. 141-60
• ‘West Saxon fortifications in the ninth century: the perspective from the written sources’, in Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval Europe, ed. J. Baker, S. Brookes and A. Reynolds (Turnhout 2013), 91-110
• ‘The Burial of kings in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Kingship, Legislation and Power, ed. G. Owen-Crocker and B. Schneider (Woodbridge, 2013), 237-58
• ‘The fate of otherworldly beings after the Anglo-Saxon conversion’, Dying Gods: Religious beliefs in northern and eastern Europe in the time of Christianisation, Neue Studien zur Sachsenforschung 5 (2015), 167-76
• ‘Introduction: Churches and the Christianisation of Early Medieval Britain’, in Places or Worship in Britain and Ireland, 300-950, ed. P.S. Barnwell, Rewley House Studies in the Historic environment 4 (Shaun Tyas, Donnington, 2015), 1-14
• ‘From Pagan to Christian in Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World: Converting the Isles I, ed. R. Flechner and M. Ní Mhaonaigh (Turnhout 2016), 237-58
• ‘King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred’, in Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture. Toller Lectures on Art, Archaeology and Text, ed. C. Insley and G. R. Owen-Crocker (Oxbow books, Oxford, 2017), 47-70
• ‘Queen Balthild’s ‘monastic policy’ and the origins of female religious houses in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Early Medieval Monasticism in the North Sea Zone. Proceedings of a Conference to Celebrate he Conclusion of the Lyminge Excavations 2008-15, ed. G. Thomas and A. Knox, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 20 (Oxford 2017), 7-16

Major lectures since 2011

• ‘King Alfred and Weland: tradition and transformation at the court of King Alfred’. Toller lecture. University of Manchester. 2011
• ‘No history, only Biography’: recreating the past through the biography of people, places and things’. Annual Reuter lecture. University of Southampton. June 2013
• ‘The fate of otherworldly beings after the conversion’. 64th Sachsensymposion, Paderborn. September 2013
• ‘Gender and status in the early middle ages’. Keynote lecture, annual conference of the Society of Gender Studies. Winchester, January, 2014
• ‘Edith and the royal house of Wessex’. Winchester und Magdeburg conference. Kulturhistorisches Museum, Magdeburg. 2014
• ‘Mercia and Wessex c. 800: connections and comparisons’. Annual Brixworth lecture. Brixworth church. November 2015
• ‘1016: the year of three kings’. Richard Rawlinson lecture. Kalamazoo International Medieval Congress. May 2016
• ‘Cnut’s Winchester’, Æthelred II and Cnut: millenary conference commemorating the siege of London 1016, London and Winchester. July 2016
• ‘Early medieval queens and Winchester’, Winchester: a nation emerges. Winchester October 2016
• ‘Abbess Ælfflaed of Whitby and the role of women in the governance of early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms’. Women Status and Power in Medieval Society. Society of Medieval Archaeology annual conference. Lincoln June 2017
• ‘Royal burial in Winchester: context and significance’. Keynote lecture. Winchester an Early Medieval Royal City. University of Winchester. July 2017
• ‘The making of a kingdom: an introduction to the archaeology and history of Early Medieval Kent’. Keynote lecture. 68. Sachsensymposion. Canterbury September 2017
• ‘Æthelflaed and Anglo-Saxon traditions of female royal power’. Keynote lecture. Æthelflaed 1100 conference. Tamworth July 2018