Völkerwanderung and Gene Flow: The Dangers and Possibilities of Genetic History in Contemporary Medieval Research

18 April 2013, 5pm

Van Pelt, Meyerson Conference Room

“Völkerwanderung and Gene Flow: The Dangers and Possibilities of Genetic History in Contemporary Medieval Research”

Patrick J. Geary (Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study)

Before his current position at the IAS, Patrick Geary was professor of history at Florida, UCLA, and Notre Dame, and past president of the Medieval Academy. He has published on a vast range of topics in medieval history. Currently, Geary is leading a major project that studies the migration of European societies north and south of the Alps through the analysis of ancient DNA in Longobard cemeteries in Hungary and in Italy. He also directs the St. Gall Plan Project, an Internet-based initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that provides tools for the study of Carolingian monasticism.  Among his 25 books and anthologies: Aristocracy in Provence: The Rhone Basin at the Dawn of the Carolingian Age (1985); Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World(1988); Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (1978); Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (1994); Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (1994); and Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2001).

A reception will follow the lecture