Michael Staunton

Research interests and publications:

I am a medieval historian, specializing in historical and biographical writing and intellectual life, especially in post-Conquest England.

My publications on Thomas Becket's biographers include edited translations of the works in The Lives of Thomas Becket(Manchester University Press, 2001), their analysis in Thomas Becket and his Biographers (Boydell, 2006), and an edited book about one of Becket's biographers, Herbert of Bosham: A Medieval Polymath (Boydell, 2019). My most recent book is a biography of Becket in the context of his twelfth-century environment, Thomas Becket and his World (Reaktion, 2025). 

In The Historians of Angevin England (Oxford University Press, 2017) I looked at the work of a number of historians writing in England in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, including Roger of Howden, William of Newburgh, Ralph of Diss, Gerald of Wales and Gervase of Canterbury. Other publications include The Illustrated Story of Christian Ireland (Emerald Press, 2001), and articles on such topics as Eadmer’s biographies of Anselm, and exile in medieval thought. I am a founder member of the Leverhulme-funded project The Angevin World. 

Current project: medieval biography:

My main work over the last few years has been on biographical works written in twelfth and early thirteenth-century England. Biography and the Biographical in Medieval England, to be published by Oxford University Press, looks at the biographies of such individuals as Anselm of Canterbury, Queen Margaret of Scotland, Hereward, Christina of Markyate, Godric of Finchale, Ailred of Rievaulx, and Hugh of Lincoln. The book argues for the value of approaching these works as 'biographies', and poses the kinds of questions often asked of ancient and modern biographies, but less so of medieval writings: for example, about the nature of the relationship between author and subject, and between the individual and the ideal. I argue that the particular value of a biographical approach to writings in a specific period is that it provides insights into the conception of a life at a particular time. The second half of the book, then addresses a number of themes and how they are addressed by these writers, ranging from origins to death, and including such topics as advancement in the world, the inner life, and physical appearance. 

Education and teaching:

I was educated at University College Cork (BA, MA) and the University of Cambridge (PhD). I worked as a Research Associate on the Anvegin Acta project at the Faculty of History, Cambridge, and then as a lecturer at the University of St Andrews before coming to University College Dublin. I was awarded a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship by the Irish Research Council, and have held visiting fellowships at the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, New York, and a visiting professorship at Bard College, New York. I am a recipient of UCD's College Teaching Award, and am a Fellow in Teaching and Academic Development. I teach survey courses on medieval Europe and specialist courses on such subjects as Medieval Ireland and Britain, biography and autobiography, and historiography, and also teach postgraduate courses on research methods, and doctoral writing. I am programme director of the Medieval Studies MA and have supervised PhD dissertations on such subjects as Geoffrey of Monmouth, the coronation ritual in Angevin England and Song China, Medieval Civility Books, Twelfth-Century Miracle Collections and medical practice. I have also acted as mentor for an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, and for a Leverhulme Travelling Research Fellowship. I welcome inquiries about PhD supervision and about mentorship of postdoctoral projects on relevant subjects.