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Dr Alex Traves

Alex’s research explores the social, cultural, political, and gender history of early medieval Europe. He is currently finishing his first monograph entitled Family and Society in Early Medieval England: AD 600 – 1050. Through the incorporation of a diverse range of source material, the book will challenge received wisdom about the family’s form and place in early medieval society and its relationship to political culture, while also recognising the gendered experiences of kinship and the relationship between kinship and religious belief. His next major research project will develop some of these themes further through an examination of the much-neglected topic of early medieval fatherhood, which will have important implications for our understanding of gender and masculinity, socio-economic status, and the foundations of temporal power. 

Alex has previously published on the genealogies of royal women and their hitherto underappreciated importance in West Saxon politics and society, and has also recently published an article in the Journal of Medieval History exploring the influence of Christianity on close family bonds in the early medieval West through the themes of penance and exile. In addition to this, he has co-published two open access primary source translations, including a treatise written by ninth-century Carolingian cleric Hrabanus Maurus entitled De honore parentum, or ‘On honouring parents’, and is also currently co-organising a collaborative project on dissolving kinship in the Global Early Middle Ages.

Selected Publications

Family and Society in Early Medieval England: AD 600 - 1050, forthcoming. 

‘Penance, Murder, and the Sanctity of Close Kinship in Early Medieval England and Francia’, Journal of Medieval History 50.3 (2024), pp. 294 - 311.

'Genealogy and Royal Women in Asser’s Life of King Alfred: Politics, Prestige and Maternal Kinship in Early Medieval England’, Early Medieval Europe 30.1 (2022), pp. 101-24.