History Department Faculty
Robin Fleming
Professor
Robin Fleming
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S325
Telephone: 617-552-8484
Email: robin.fleming.1@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., University of California
- Ph.D., University of California
Research Interests
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England; material culture
Department
Biography
Professor Fleming teaches courses on Roman and early medieval history, the Vikings, historical archaeology, and material culture. Earlier in her career she wrote on the political history of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Norman England; historical writing in the early Middle Ages; English law before the Common Law; Domesday Book; and nineteenth-century medievalism. She now investigates Roman and early medieval material culture and animals, and writes history from archaeology.听 Her most recent book, on Britain in the century before and after Rome鈥檚 fall, thinks through the ways Roman ways of life, identity, burial, and status marking changed once the Roman economy collapsed and connections to the wider Roman world began to unravel.听 She is now finishing a new book on dogs in Roman Britain, an earlier version of which she gave as the 2022 James Ford Lecturer in British history at the University of Oxford.听 Videos of the six lectures can be found on the .听 听
She has received grants or fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Harvard Society of Fellows; the Bunting Institute; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University; and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Royal Historical Society, and the London Society of Antiquaries.
In 2006 she received the first annual Boston College Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Mentoring Award. She is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow.
Publications
Books:
The Material Fall of Roman Britain (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).
Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise of the Middle Ages, c. 400鈥揷. 1050, New Penguin History of Britain, vol. 2 (Penguin: UK edition, 2010; US and paperback editions, 2011; Chinese translation, 2017).
Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England听(Cambridge University Press: 1998; paperback edition 2004).
Kings and Lords in Conquest England听(Cambridge University Press: 1991; reprint 1995; paperback edition 2004; Chinese translation, 2008).
Special Edition of a Journal
Co-edited a special edition (with Katherine L. French) of the journal听Fragments, 5鈥�7 entitled听A Thing of the Past: Material Evidence and the Writing of Medieval England鈥檚 Past(2016鈥�18).
听
Recent Articles & Book Chapters:
with Katherine L. French, 鈥淥bjecthood,鈥� in Sarah Semple and Julie Lund, eds., A Cultural History of Objects (London, in press).
鈥淭he Movement of People and Things between Britain and France in the Late- and Post-Roman Periods,鈥� in Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira, eds.,听Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World听(Oxford, in press).
听听鈥淥ld Buildings, Building Material, and the Death of Recycling in Post-Roman Britain,鈥� in Chloe Duckworth and Andrew Wilson, eds.,听Ancient Recycling听(Oxford, in press).
听鈥淔our Communities of Pot and Glass Recyclers in Early Post Roman Britain,鈥� in听Transformations of Romanness, ed. Walter Pohl (Vienna, 2018), 403鈥�18.
The Ritual Recycling of Roman Building Material in Late Fourth- and Early Fifth-Century Britain,鈥澨�European Journal of Post-Classical Archaeologies, 6 (2016), 7鈥�31.
听co-authored with Keith Fitzpatrick Matthews, 鈥淭he Perils of Periodization: Roman Ceramics after 400,鈥� in a special edition of听Fragments: A Thing of the Past: Material Evidence and the Writing of Medieval England鈥檚 Material Past: Robin Fleming and Katherine French, eds.,听Fragments, 5 (2016), 1鈥�33.
鈥淪truggling to be Roman in a Former Roman Province,鈥澨�Being Roman on the Periphery: Identities in the Provinces, ed. Lisa Brody and Gail Hoffman (Chicago, 2014), 211鈥�28.
Recycling in Britain after the Fall of Rome鈥檚 Metal Economy,鈥澨�Past and Present, 217 (2012), 3鈥�45.
"Elites, Boats and Foreigners: Rethinking the Rebirth of English Towns,鈥� in听Citt脿 e campagna prima del mille, Atti delle Settimane di Studio, 56 (2009), 393-425.
鈥淲riting Biography on the Edge of History,鈥澨�American Historical Review, 114 (2009), 606-14.
","听,听15 (2007), 127-58.
鈥淏ones for Historians: Putting the Body Back in Biography,鈥� in听, ed. David Bates (Woodbridge, 2006), 29-48.
鈥淢acDomesday Book鈥� (co-authored with Andrew Lowerre),听Past and Present, 184 (2004), 209-32.
鈥淟ords and Labour,鈥� in听, ed. Wendy Davies (Oxford, 2003), 107-38.