National Lecture Program

AIA Lecturer: Caroline Goodson

Affiliation: University of Cambridge

Caroline Goodson is University Senior Lecturer with the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge; she was previsouly Reader in Archaeology and History with the Department of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.  She holds her degrees from Columbia University (Ph.D.), Istituto Internavionale di Studi Liguri, Bordighera, and the Rhode Island School of Design; Dr. Goodson is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, was the recipient of a 2003 Rome Prize, and 2016 she was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for her project, “Urban gardening in Early Medieval Italy: cultivating the city”.  She is Field Director at the site of Villa Magna in Italy.

"For the past 15 years, I have been exploring the formation of early medieval societies in the post-Roman world, especially Italy and North Africa. My research concentrates on the nature of power in these places, looking at how different groups positioned themselves as successors of the Romans’ past glories or innovators in a new world order. I am particularly interested in two issues: how religious beliefs related to day-to-day experiences (and how these have been transmitted to us through the material and textual records) and how cities facilitated new forms of social interaction and political authority. My work deliberately moves between the disciplines of archaeology and history. I work as a field archaeologist and, in addition to excavation, I use standing buildings archaeology, archaeological archives, and material culture studies in my research. I have also published extensively on medieval documentary and historical texts, such as chronicles, hagiography, and more recently charters and diplomata."

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