About

Dr Benjamin Pohl joined the University of Bristol in 2015 as a Lecturer in Medieval History. He was promoted (via accelerated progression) to Senior Lecturer in 2018, and to Associate Professor (Reader) in 2022.

Benjamin received his PhD from the University of Bamberg. Prior to his appointment at Bristol, he held postdoctoral research fellowships at the Universities of Bamberg, Cambridge, and Ghent. He is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Royal Historical Society, and the Higher Education Academy, an alumnus of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), and the German Historical Institute in London (GHIL), and a former research associate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is a councillor of the Bristol Record Society, a member of the comité de rédaction of Tabularia: Sources écrites des mondes normands médiévaux, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and series editor of Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures.

Benjamin's main research interests are medieval European history and historiography, with a special focus on manuscript studies, palaeography and codicology, book history, historical writing, and cultural memory. He has published widely on the history of medieval Normandy, England, and other parts of Europe (incl. Southern Italy and Germany). He is the creator and curator of the online exhibition History and Community: 20 Exhibits from Downside Abbey, which runs from 2020–25.

His publications include the authored books Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (Boydell/YMP, 2015), The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment (ARC/AUP, 2021, w/ Leah Tether and Laura Chuhan Campbell), Abbatial Authority and the Writing of History in the Middle Ages (OUP, 2023), Publishing in a Medieval Monastery: The View from Twelfth-Century Engelberg (CUP, 2023), and Michaelskirche, Fulda (Schnell & Steiner, 2023, w/ Notker Baumann et al.); the edited volumes Record, Relate, Remember: Narrative Constructions of Memory and Generation in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (UBP, 2012, w/ Hartwin Brandt et al.), A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Brill, 2017, w/ Laura Gathagan), History & Community = special issue of The Downside Review (Sage, 2021), and The Cambridge Companion to the Age of William the Conqueror (CUP, 2022); plus over 45 journal articles and book chapters.

He is currently writing a new book on the thirteenth-century roll cartulary of Aynho Hospital, Northamptonshire, provisionally titled The Aynho Cartulary: Study, Text, and Translation (w/ Richard Allen), which is under contract with Boydell & Brewer for publication in their Medieval Documentary Cultures series.

Virtual Bookshelf

Authored books

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Edited books

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Fellowships

• Next Generation Visiting Fellowship, Univ. of Bristol (host for S. Bruce) (2022/23)
• Gangolf Schrimpf Visiting Fellowship, Univ. of Fulda, Bibliotheca Fuldensis (2019)
• Visiting Fellowship, Fordham Univ., NYC (2019)
• Center for Renaissance Studies Faculty Fellowship, Newberry Library, Chicago (2019)
• Lendrum Priory Residential Research Library Fellowship, Durham Univ. (2019)
• Arts Faculty Visiting Fellowship, Univ. of Bristol (host for N. Paul) (2019)
• Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professorship, Univ. of Bristol (host for S. Vanderputten) (2017)
• Visiting Fellowship, John Rylands Library and Research Institute (2016)
• Feodor Lynen Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2015)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Faculty of History, Univ. of Cambridge (2013–15)
• Associate Fellowship, Emmanuel College, Cambridge (2013–15)
• FNK Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Univ. of Bamberg (2013)
• Visiting Scholarship, German Historical Institute, London (2011)

Research Grants

• Neil Ker Memorial Fund, British Academy (2022–23)
• Costed Extension to Mid-Career Fellowship, British Academy (2020–21)
• Mid-Career Fellowship, British Academy (2019–20)
• Neil Ker Memorial Fund, British Academy (2018)
• Postdoctoral Research Grant, National Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) (2015)
• Neil Ker Memorial Fund, British Academy (2014)
• Postdoctoral Research Grant, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (2013–15)
• Postdoctoral Research Grant, German Research Foundation (DFG) (2013)
• Postdoctoral Research Grant, Commission for Research and Young Academics (FNK) (2013)
• Doctoral Research Grant, German Research Foundation (DFG) (2009–13)
• Foreign Exchange Scholarship, National Univ. of Ireland, Galway, ERASMUS (2006–2007)

Prizes, Awards and Small Grants

• Seedcorn Research Grant, Centre for Material Texts, University of Bristol (2020)
• Research Initiatives Fund, University of Bristol (2019)
• CREATE Excellence Award in Research and Teaching, University of Bristol (2018)
• BIRTHA Research Grant, University of Bristol (2015)
• Best Doctoral Dissertation Prize, University of Bamberg (2013)
• Muriel Brown Bursary, Allen Brown Memorial Trust (2011)
• Postgraduate Bursary, Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies (2011)

Linguistic Profile

• German (native speaker)
• English (bilingual)
• French
• Dutch
• Latin (classical and medieval)
• Medieval vernaculars (various)

Contact

Office: 2.42, 13 Woodland Rd

Email: benjamin.pohl@bristol.ac.uk

Twitter: @AbbotsMedieval