Career Details 

Simon Yarrow is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. Simon read for his BA and MA in History at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne University.  He then moved to Oxford and read for a D.Phil on the subject of saints’ cults in twelfth century England (1995-1998).  In 1999 he taught medieval history at St Mary’s University College, Strawberry Hill, before teaching at Birkbeck College, University of London, for two years (2000-2002).  In 2000 Simon gained the Past and PresentResearch Fellowship.  He spent two rewarding years at Liverpool University (2002-2004), in an AHRC post-doctoral research fellowship, working with a team of young scholars on a Anglo-Norman historiography, before arriving in Birmingham in the Autumn of 2004.

Current Research 

I am currently working on the Historia Ecclesiasticaof Orderic Vitalis, a Norman monk and historian of the early twelfth century.  The scale of Orderic’s main work, and the ambition and breadth of his coverage, chronologically and topically, makes his a remarkable contribution to a flourishing phase of Anglo-Norman historiography.  If his efforts were not rewarded with a great medieval readership, it remains important to ask what motivated Orderic to write his universal history and whom he intended for its audience and how he intended his work to be used.  Some indication of this will be gained from a comparison of his work with that of his contemporaries.  I am working on a book that will examine Orderic’s understandings of contemporary political culture, with particular interest in his constructions of gendered and ethnic identities among the elite men and women in an age marked by conquest and diverse inter-cultural contact.  The aim is to investigate how these constructions reflect, encode and negotiate these political and cultural events, chief among them the Norman Conquest of England.  I plan to incorporate my existing work on the cult of saints in twelfth century England into this wider framework of study into narrative genres and what they can tell us about processes of social and political formation in the eleventh and twelfth century.

Past Research 

I have just completed a book on miracle narratives and the cult of saints in twelfth century England.  It is chiefly concerned with the social and political relationships inscribed in narratives of religious practice.

Postgraduate Supervision 

I am interested to supervise postgraduate work on narrative sources, including histories and hagiographies, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in France and England, with particular reference to elite political cultures and ideas of gender and other social identities.

Select Publications 

Saints and Their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth Century England (Oxford, 2005).

‘Narrative, Audience and the Negotiation of Community in Twelfth Century English Miracle Collections’, in Studies in Church History, 42 (forthcoming).

‘Hagiography and the Historian’ History Compass, Institute of Historical Research website (2004).

Reviews in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Early Medieval Europe, and Midland History.