Rate My Professor Levi Roach

Levi Roach is Professor of Medieval History and Diplomatic in the Department of Archaeology and History at the University of Exeter, serving as Deputy Head of Department and Head of Subject for History. He completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2011, after studying at both Cambridge and Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. From 2011 to 2012, he held a Title A Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, before taking up a lectureship in Medieval History at Exeter in 2012, advancing through the ranks to his current chair in 2024.

Roach's academic interests center on the political, religious, and diplomatic history of early medieval Europe, particularly Anglo-Saxon England and the Ottonian Holy Roman Empire, with key themes including kingship, assemblies, consent, documentary culture, charters, and forgery. His major publications include the monograph Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England, 871–978 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), which analyzes political participation in late Saxon governance; Æthelred the Unready (Yale University Press, 2016), awarded the Longman/History Today Book of the Year; Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton University Press, 2021), developed during an AHRC Fellowship (2017–2019) on falsified documents and institutional history c.970–1020; and Empires of the Normans: Makers of Europe, Conquerors of Asia (John Murray, 2022). He has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals such as German History, Early Medieval Europe, and Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, addressing topics like Ottonian diplomacy and post-Carolingian legitimacy. Roach's research has received funding from the AHRC and Freunde der Monumenta Germaniae Historica. In 2024, he delivered the Royal Historical Society Lecture, 'Charting Authority after Empire: Documentary Culture and Political Legitimacy in Post-Carolingian Europe'. He edits charters for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and contributes to departmental leadership at Exeter.