Editor, Medieval Britain & Ireland

Prof Neil Christie PhD, FSA

Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester

Visit Neil’s staff profile at the University of Leicester here.

Neil joined the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester as Lecturer in Archaeology in 1992, and has slowly risen up the ranks since then, showing he is researching and teaching in a very satisfactory manner! A key role in Leicester currently is as Postgraduate (Research) Tutor overseeing all research postgraduates. Prior to Leicester he held scholarships in Rome and postdoctoral fellowships at the Universities of Newcastle Upon Tyne (to research late Roman Italy), and then Oxford (to work on the Lombards).  As detailed below, primary research interests centre on late Roman and early medieval archaeology in the Mediterranean and Italian context. But publications have also included edited work (co-edited with Paul Stamper) on Medieval Rural Settlement in Britain and Ireland, AD 800-1500 (Oxford 2011).
Neil has been a member of SMA Council since 2007. Since 2007 he has been the journal’s Reviews Editor and the General Editor to the Medieval Britain & Ireland section.  Do contact him regarding possible fieldwork highlights and review titles/offers.

Research interests

Neil’s main research areas cover late Roman to medieval archaeology, with special interest in Italy and in urbanism, plus in areas such as castle formation and church archaeology. He has long been active in fieldwork with projects in Italy (currently with Denis Sami at a Roman village site near Cesenatico between Rimini and Ravenna; and since Sept 2011 at the late antique to early medieval San Martino hilltop settlement near Tenno near the north end of lake Garda) and, most recently (2008-2010), in England at the late Saxon and Norman town of Wallingford in south Oxfordshire, where, across a three-year AHRC funded project, an array of techniques was employed to tease out the plan and contents of the site across AD 800-1500. Find out more about the Wallingford project here.