Academic & Teaching staff

Professor Graham Loud

Professor of Medieval History; Director of the Institute of Medieval Studies

Professor Graham Loud

+44 (0)113 34 33601

Research Interests

The Normans in southern Italy (and more generally south Italian history 10-13th century, especially social and ecclesiastical); papal history and Italian ecclesiastical history,10th-13th centuries; The Crusades; Germany 11-13th centuries (especially ecclesiastical history).

I edit Medieval History Texts in Translation.

Forthcoming Research

My major field of research has in the past been the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, and more generally southern Italian history from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. While not abandoning this field completely, my forthcoming book, Roger II and the Creation of the Kingdom of Sicily (Manchester Medieval Translations, 2011) will mark the conclusion of my work in this area for at least a short time, while I seek to develop other interests.

I intend to write a series of articles on German history in the Central Middle Ages - an interest which springs directly from my teaching, and which has already given rise to my book on The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa (Ashgate 2010). I am currently working on two related articles, one on southern Italy and the two empires of Byzantium and Germany during the tenth century, and the other on the German Emperors and southern Italy 962-1137 (from the imperial coronation of Otto I until the Emperor Lothar's unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Norman kingdom). I am also preparing a separate study examining the murder of bishops in medieval Germany, and what this phenomenon may tell us about the role of violence in German society during the Middle Ages. I then hope to write a further piece discussing when Germany became an elective monarchy in the Middle Ages. (This last subject has a vast historiography, but is in need of re-examination by a fresh eye without preconceptions). In addition, I shall be collaborating with my colleague Alan Murray (Institute of Medieval Studies) and Dr. Jochen Schenk of the German Historical Institute in London to edit a collection of essays on the growth of territorial lordship and princely power in twelfth and thirteenth century Germany.

I hope then when this work is completed to return to southern Italy, and to write a book on the social and economic world of the abbey of S. Trinità di Cava, c. 1020-1300. The abbey of Cava (near Salerno), which still exists today, was one of the wealthiest abbeys of the medieval Mezzogiorno, and has the largest surviving archive of medieval documents in southern Italy - which is a treasure trove of evidence not just about the Church, but for the social history of the medieval south.

Current Research Student

  • Isabella Bolognese - The foundation and early history of the Benedictine monastery of Montevergine