Dr Alex Metcalfe

Profile

Funded research projects (current and recent)

• Tremila anni di storia della Sardegna fra mare e monti: Il paesaggio storico-culturale del Rio Posada (funded by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy, 2013-16) Co-investigator in collaboration with Dr F. Sulas and Dr G. Serreli (CNR, Istituto di Storia dell'Europa mediterranea, Cagliari; Prof. C. French (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge); and the Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici delle Provincie di Sassari e Nuoro, Sardegna.
• The Monreale census lists supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship 2011-12. (Principal investigator). Click to view or download a project poster (opens as 2Mb .pdf). This forms part of a wider project, The Arabic documents of Norman Sicily in collaboration with Prof. J. Johns and the Khalili Research Centre (KRC), University of Oxford.
• The Norman Edge: Identity and state formation on the frontiers of Europe. Co-investigator in collaboration with Prof. A. Jotischky (Co-I) and Prof. K. Stringer (PI) in the Dept of History, Lancaster University. Funded by an AHRC grant from 2008-11. 

Research Interests

• Regional focus: the Mediterranean basin and islands, especially Sicily; Sardinia; the Italian Peninsula; North Africa; the Iberian Peninsula; Egypt.
• Period: The Middle Ages (c. 500-c. 1300).
• Principal research area: Islamic Sicily and the south Italian Normans.
• Primary source materials: mainly charters and narrative histories (Arabic, Greek and Latin)
• Political History: medieval chanceries; law, administration and governance; the formation and disintegration of pre-modern states in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
• Religious History: politico-religious ideologies; sacral authority and rulership; Muslim and Christian concepts of holy war; interfaith relations; religious assimilation and conversion.
• Social and Socio-Economic History: socio-religious change; concepts of acculturation; transcultural contacts; ethnicity and identity-formation; frontier communities; occupations and social hierarchies; kinship and 'tribalism'; social and fiscal status of Muslims under Christian rule and vice-versa.
• Historical Linguistics: bilingualism and multilingualism; medieval translation movements; onomastics (anthroponyms and toponyms); Sicilian Arabic; medieval Italo-Greek and early Italo-Romance dialects.
• See also my personal pages on Academia.edu

Additional Information

Publications (authored, edited, forthcoming)

• Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily: The Monreale Census Lists. New critical editions of royal Arabic and Greek charters with commentaries, translations and indices in three volumes (forthcoming from 2013). See Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily for further and forthcoming details (NB website is under construction).
• 'State of the art or art of the state?' Reflections on the bilingual documents of Norman Sicily in Multilingual and multigraphic manuscripts and documents of East and West, eds. Giuseppe Mandalà and Inmaculada Pérez Martín (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2014).
• I musulmani dell'Italia medievale (Palermo: Officina di Studi medievali, January 2014, forthcoming). An expanded and updated Italian translation of the monograph The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009), with a preface by Dr. F. Maurici.
• 'Transkultureller und sozio-religiöser Wandel im muslimischen und frühen normannischen Sizilien' in Sizilien - Schnittstelle im Mittelmeer, eds. W. Gruber and S. Köhler (Vienna: Mandalbaum Verlag, June 2013).
• Introduction to Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean [The Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series], eds. Sarah Davies-Secord and Elizabeth A. Cawthon (Texas A&M Press, 2013 forthcoming).
• Themed issue of Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 25/1 (2013), co-edited with Mariam Rosser-Owen. ISSN 0950-3110.
• 'Forgotten Connections: Material Culture and Exchange in the Central and Western Mediterranean, 7th-13th Centuries' (with Mariam Rosser-Owen) in Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 25/1 (2013). ISSN 0950-3110.
• 'Orientation in three spheres: medieval Mediterranean boundary clauses in Latin, Greek and Arabic', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 22, (2012), 37-55. Click to access (login required).
• The Book in Fact and Fiction in Pre-Modern Arabic Literature, themed volume of the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 12 (2012), co-edited with Antonella Ghersetti. ISSN: 0806-198X. 263 pages. Click to read online.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011) editor. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 10 (2010) editor. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 352 pages. ISBN 978-0-7486-2007-4. Paperback edition: 978-0-7486-2008-1. Click for extensive preview. Click for purchase details.
• 'The Lands of Twelfth-Century Corleone', 'The Christians of Twelfth-Century Corleone' and 'Extracts from the Travels of Ibn Jubayr' in Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation, eds. K. Jansen, J. Drell and F. Andrews (Richmond: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 65-70 and 234-40. ISBN: 978-0812241648. Click for purchase details.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 9 (2009) editor. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• 'Sicilian Arabic' in The Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, eds K. Versteegh, M. Eid, A. Elgibali, M. Woidich and A. Zaborski, 4 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2009), iv, pp. 215-19. ISBN: 978-90-04-14476-7. Read in Lancaster e-prints.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 8 (2008) edited with Joseph N. Bell and Lutz Edzard. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• 'Trusting the text as far as we can throw the scribe: further notes on reading a bilingual jar?dat al-hud?d from the royal d?w?n of Norman Sicily' in From Al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, eds. P. M. Sijpesteijn, L. Sundelin, S. Torallas Tovar, A. Zomeño, [Islamic History and Civilization Series: Studies and Texts, vol. 66], (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 78-98. ISBN: 90-04-15567-8. Read in Lancaster e-prints. Click for purchase details.
• Under-Age Rule in the Medieval Islamic World (2007) editor. Themed volume of al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean with editor's introduction. Click to read in Lancaster e-prints. Click for purchase details.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 7 (2007) edited with Joseph N. Bell. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read.
• Review of Sheila S. Blair's Islamic Inscriptions (Edinburgh, 1998) in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 32 (2005), 138-9. Click to read via JSTOR.
• Review of Jeremy Johns's Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwan (Cambridge, 2002) in English Historical Review 119 (2004), 118-120. Click here to read via EHR site.
• Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily. Arabic Speakers and the End of Islam (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). 286 pages. ISBN 0-7007-1685-8. Read an extensive preview online. Click for purchase details. Now available in paperback: click for purchase details.
• The Society of Norman Italy, edited with Graham A. Loud (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 381 pages. ISBN 9004125418. Click for limited preview.
• 'The Muslims of Sicily under Christian Rule' in The Society of Norman Italy eds. Graham A. Loud and Alex Metcalfe (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 289-317. ISBN 9004125418. Read in Lancaster e-prints.
• 'De Saracenico in Latinum Transferri: Causes and Effects of Translation in the Fiscal Administration of Norman Sicily', Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 13 (2001), 43-86. ISSN: 0950-3110 0950-311. Read in Lancaster e-prints.
• 'The Mystery at Chúrchuro: Conspiracy or Incompetence in Twelfth-Century Sicily?' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62/2 (1999), 226-59 (with Jeremy Johns). ISSN: 0041-977X. Click to read via JSTOR.

Academic awards and fellowships 

• Visiting Scholar, Wolfson College, University of Oxford (2010-12).
• Research Associate, The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford (2010-12).
• Research Associate, The Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford (2010-12).
• British Academy Mid-Career Fellow (2011-12)
• Visiting Professor, The University of Cyprus (March 2011).
• Fellow of The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (2007-10).
• UK represenative of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (UEAI) (2006-present).
• Visiting Lecturer at Ca' Fóscari, University of Venice (April-May 2005).
• Fellow of The Royal Historical Society (2005-present).
• British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2001-4).
• Arts and Humanities Research Board Postgraduate Award Holder (1997-2000).

 

Academic qualifications

• PhD (Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds). Supervisors: Prof Dionisius A. Agius (Leeds) and Prof. Jeremy Johns (Oriental Institute, Oxford)
• BA (Hons) in Arabic Studies (Dept of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds).
• BA (Hons) and MA in Literæ Humaniores (Exeter College, Oxford).

Academic and university administration

Undergraduate Admissions Team (2012-13); Departmental Academic Officer (2008-10); Part II Examinations' Officer (2008-10); Director of Overseas Exchange Programmes (2007-10); Undergraduate Teaching Committee Member (2004-10); Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies Degree Scheme (2007-8); Student Careers Officer (2007-8); Faculty and Undergraduate Courses Committee (2005-6); History Society Liaison Officer (2005-6). 

I was also the external examiner for the Dept of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh between 2007 and 2012, and have examined candidates for research degrees at the Central European University (CEU), Budapest; L'Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale', and Martin-Luther-Univeristät (MLU), Halle-Wittenberg. For some years I've been working for the International Baccalaureate Organsiation, setting the Route 1 exam papers for the Standard Level and Higher Level Diploma (Group 6 - Arts): History of Europe and the Muslim World).

Current teaching 

• (H204) The origns and rise of Islam
• (H205) Byzantine and Islamic Sicily
• (H300) Dissertation
• (H312) The Normans in Italy
• I also contribute to Masters' course 'History for Life'; Part I u/grad teaching ('From the Medieval to the Modern') and I've previously taught courses on The Crusades; Muslim Spain; the Medieval Islamic Underworld; Muslim Travellers and Geographers, and Arabic Grammar.

 

• Dr Alex Metcalfe awarded British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship

  07/06/2011
  The Department of History is very pleased to be able to announce the award of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to Dr Alex Metcalfe for his project 'Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily: The Monrea ... Read more»