Dr Alex Traves

I am an historian of the Early Middle Ages, specialising in the social and cultural history of Europe during this period. I am currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow undertaking a project entitled 'Fatherhood in Early Medieval England, AD 600 - 1050'. My first monograph, Family and Society in Early Medieval England, AD 600 - 1050 is forthcoming in 2026, and is a revised version of my doctoral research. Although my publications to date have centred primarily on kinship, my research interests more broadly encompass slavery, gender, penance, law and morality, and these topics form important parts of my ongoing and future research and publication agenda.

Before joining Leicester in October 2025, I previously worked as a Lecturer in Early Medieval History at the University of York, and as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Sheffield, where I also completed my PhD in 2022.

My current research project, 'Fatherhood in Early Medieval England, AD 600 - 1050', seeks to reveal, for the first time, how contemporaries perceived and practiced fatherhood, and how fatherhood may have changed over the course of the early Middle Ages in response to a variety of socio-political developments and upheavals. It is often said that early medieval society was inherently patriarchal: this project will enhance our understanding of what this really meant in an early medieval context. By encompassing a broad range of sources, including legal material, letters, genealogies, glossaries, hagiography, biblical commentaries, and poetry, as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches, the project aims to challenge our understanding of early medieval gender, masculinity, the family and the household, as well as constructions of power and authority which were so often rooted in the language of fatherhood.

This current project builds on my previous research on kinship, which forms the basis of my forthcoming monograph, Family and Society in Early Medieval England, c. 600 - 1050. The book challenges received wisdom that the role and importance of the family within society declined over time due to the rise of lordship and increasingly centralised kingship, while also exploring the perceived nature and structure of family bonds, and how experiences of family relationships could be shaped by issues such as gender and socio-economic status. 

As well as these projects, I have also published related research on the genealogies of royal women and maternal kinship, and on penitential punishment and the influence of Christianity on kinship bonds. I am also currently working on publications relating to early medieval slavery, which is another emerging area of interest.

Monographs

• Family and Society in Early Medieval England, c. 600 - 1050 (forthcoming, 2026). [link]

Journal Articles 

• Penance, Murder, and the Sanctity of Close Kinship in Early Medieval England and Francia’, Journal of Medieval History 50.3 (2024), pp. 294 - 311. [link]

• 'Genealogy and Royal Women in Asser’s Life of King Alfred: Politics, Prestige and Maternal Kinship in Early Medieval England’, Early Medieval Europe 30.1 (2022), pp. 101-24. [link]

Open access translations

• Hraban Maur, 'On honouring parents, 834', by R. Gilbert, A. Traves, C. West, and T. Zhang (eds), with an introduction by M. de Jong, in Mittelalter: Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte 5 (2022), pp. 1–33. [link]

• ‘[Review] Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives, by T. Porck and H. Soper’, English Historical Review 138 (590-1) (2023), pp.311-3.
• ‘[Review] Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe, by Hans Hummer’, Early Medieval Europe 30 (2) (2022), pp.305-7.

I currently teach the 'People and Places' option 'Alfred, King of Wessex: Revealing Family, Society and Warfare in Late Ninth-Century England' (2025-6 SEM2).

In my previous roles, I have convened and taught on modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels on a broad range of medieval topics including migration, memory, the global Middle Ages, the Viking World, King Alfred and the making of England, empires, early medieval will-making, and physical punishment, as well as historical skills and historiography. 

• British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2025 - 2028)
• Faculty of Arts and Humanities Doctoral Academy Award (2018 - 2021)

I have presented my research at a number of international conferences, including multiple occasions at the International Medieval Congress (Leeds), where I have previously organised a session of papers on the theme of 'kinship and violence in the Early Middle Ages', the International Congress on Medieval Studies, and the ISSEME conferences. 

I have also co-organised two international conferences on the topic of 'Dissolving Kinship in the Early Middle Ages, AD 400 - 1000', the first of which was held at the University of York (UK, 2023), followed by a second conference at the University of Tübingen (Germany, 2024). The culmination of these events will be a forthcoming special issue on the topic in the Journal of Medieval History, which I am co-editing.