Dr Susan Edgington

Contact Details

Department of History
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London, E1 4NS

Background

When and where did you initially develop an interest in the history of the crusades and/or the Latin East?

When I was an undergraduate at Royal Holloway.

Who or what sparked your enthusiasm for the subject?

I studied optional and special subjects in Mediterranean History and ‘Byzantium, Italy and the First Crusade’. An expenses paid excursion to Greece and Constantinople when I was 20 sealed the deal.

Education

Please provide details of your Higher Education, including dates, institution(s) and the name(s) of your research supervisors.

  • Royal Holloway College, University of London BA Hons, History branch II, 1965-68.
  • RHC and then London external, PhD study under Professor JM Hussey and Miss Julian Chrysostomides, 1968-91
  • Society of Apothecaries, Diploma in the History of Medicine, 2006
  • BA modules in Latin, Greek and Classical Studies, Open University 2001-

Career History

Please provide details of your academic career history, including confirmation of your current institutional affiliation and contact details.

  • 1976-1997 Further Education teaching, Huntingdonshire Regional College
  • 1997-present lecturing and research contracts, including the Open University and Queen Mary, University of London
  • Currently Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London (address above).

Influences and Methodologies

What ideas and/or methodologies have informed your approach to your research?

My main interest from the beginning has been to work on texts: discovering, editing, translating and exploring their historiography.

Research Outlook

What do you consider to be the most important avenues for future research in the field of crusader studies?

In line with my own interests, above, I hope to see more research and publication of texts in Arabic and other non-European languages. Collaborative work (west / east) and interdisciplinary work (archaeology / art history / linguistics) are also promising.

Research Output

Please provide details of your research output, including publications and other media as appropriate.

(These are books and articles relating to the crusades only; I have also published local and regional history)

  • ‘Pagan Peverel: An Anglo-Norman crusader’, in Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the SSCLE and Presented to RC Smail, ed PW Edbury (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1985), pp 90-3
  • Chronicles of the Crusades, ed E Hallam (London: Weidenfeld, 1989), section on First Crusade, pp 59-113
  • ‘Medical knowledge in the crusading armies: the evidence of Albert of Aachen and others’, in The Military Orders:  Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed M Barber (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994), pp 320-6
  • The First Crusade, New Appreciations in History, 37 (London: Historical Association, 1996)
  • ‘The Lisbon Letter of the Second Crusade’, Historical Research, lxix (1996), 328-39
  • ‘The doves of war: the part played by carrier pigeons in the crusades’, Autour de la Première Croisade, ed M Balard (Paris: Sorbonne, 1996), pp 167-75
  • ‘The First Crusade: reviewing the evidence’, in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed J Phillips (Manchester: MUP, 1997), pp 57-77
  • ‘Albert of Aachen reappraised’, in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095-1500, ed AV Murray (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp 55-67
  • ‘Albert of Aachen and the chansons de geste’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed J France and WG Zajac (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp 23-37
  • ‘Medical care in the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem’, in The Military Orders, vol 2: Welfare and Warfare, ed H Nicholson (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998), pp 27-33
  • Walter the Chancellor’s The Antiochene Wars, with TS Asbridge(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999)
  • ‘Albert of Aachen, St Bernard and the Second Crusade’, in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, eds M Hoch and J Phillips (Manchester: MUP, 2001), pp 54-70
  • Gendering the Crusades, co-editor with S Lambert (Cardiff: UWP, 2001)
  • ‘ “Sont çou ore les fems que jo voi la venir?”  Women in the Chanson d’Antioche’, in Gendering the Crusades, eds SB Edgington and S Lambert (Cardiff: UWP, 2001), pp 154-62
  • ‘Romance and reality in the sources for the sieges of Antioch, 1097-8’, in Porphyrogenita: Essays in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed Ch Dendrinos et al (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp 33-46
  • ‘The First Crusade in post-war fiction’, The Experience of Crusading: Essays presented to Jonathan Riley-Smith, eds M Bull and N Housley (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp 255-80
  • Items on The Crusades and Richard I for The Reader’s Guide to British History (New York and London: Fitzroy-Dearborn, 2003), i, 323-4; ii, 1118-9
  • The First Crusade (New York: Rosen, 2004), 64pp. (schoolbook)
  • ‘Medicine and surgery in the Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois de Jerusalem’, Al-Masâq, 18 (2005), pp 87-97
  • ‘Administrative Regulations for the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem dating from the 1180s’, Crusades, 4 (2005), pp 21-37
  • ‘Antioch, Medieval City of Culture’, in East and West in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean, ed K Ciggaar, M Metcalf, vol 1, Orientalia Lovaniensa Analecta 147 (2006), pp 247-259
  • Items on Albert of Aachen; Chanson d’Antioche; De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi; Excidium Acconis; Fulcher of Chartres; Holy Sepulchre; Hospital of St John (Jerusalem); Martyrdom, Christian; Medicine; Motivation; Peter Tudebode; Raymond of Aguilers; Teutonic Source; Thadeus of Naples; Walter the Chancellor; Western Sources: for Encyclopedia of the Crusades, ed Alan V Murray (ABC-CLIO, 2006)
  • A Female Physician on the Fourth Crusade?  Laurette de Saint-Valery’, in Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar, presented to Malcolm Barber, ed N Housley (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp 77-85
  • Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed and trans (Oxford: Oxford Medieval Texts, 2007)
Forthcoming
  • ‘The crusaders write home: the experience of the First Crusade as described in participants’ letters’, Segundas Jornadas Internacionales sobre la Primera Cruzada conference volume, ed Luis García-Guijarro Ramos (Zaragoza)
  • ‘Crusader Chronicles: revisions and additions to the nineteenth-century texts’, Runciman conference volume, ed Luis García-Guijarro Ramos (Zaragoza)
  • La Chanson d’Antioche, translation and commentary (with Carol Sweetenham), for Ashgate, 2008
  • ‘Pagans and “Others” in the Chanson de Jerusalem’, paper given at Leeds IMC 2004 (publication in conference volume, Languages of Love and Hate, Brepols)

 

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