Dr Matthew Stevens

Research Highlights

1. Stevens, M. & Maleszka, A. (n.d.) Maintaining a ‘special relationship’? Petitions to the crown from Irish and Welsh towns, 13th –16th centuries. In Matthew Frank Stevens, Roman Czaja (Ed.), Towns on the Edge in Medieval Europe: the Social and Political Order of Peripheral Urban Communities from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57924
2. Stevens, M. & Booker, S. (n.d.) ‘Irishtowns’ and ‘Welsh Streets’: ethnic enclaves within the towns of colonial Ireland and Wales in a northern-European colonial context. In Matthew Frank Stevens, Roman Czaja (Ed.), Towns on the Edge in Medieval Europe: the Social and Political Order of Peripheral Urban Communities from the Twelfth to Sixteenth CenturiesOxford University Press

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57923
3. Stevens, M. & Czaja, R. (n.d.) The place of native populations in the chartered towns of conquered regions: Wales and Prussia as a comparative case study. In Matthew Frank Stevens, Roman Czaja (Ed.), Towns on the Edge in Medieval Europe: the Social and Political Order of Peripheral Urban Communities from the Twelfth to Sixteenth CenturiesOxford University Press

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57922
4. Stevens, M. & Czaja, R. (Eds.). (n.d.) Towns on the Edge in Medieval Europe: The Social and Political Order of Peripheral Urban Communities from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries. Oxford University Press.

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57919
5. Stevens, M. (n.d.) 'Colonisation and credit in medieval Wales'. In Stephan Nicolussi-Köhler (Ed.), Change and Transformation of Premodern Credit Markets: The Importance of Small-Scale Credits (Heidelberg, heiBOOKS, 2021) (pp. 23-48). heiBOOKS

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57916

All Research

• "Nationalism and the Nation in the English Civil War" (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Dr Regina Poertner

• The Social and Economic Development of the Cities of Old Sarum and New Sarum (Salisbury) (1066-1450) (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Prof Daniel Power

• HI-M326 The Urban Colonization of Medieval Wales: Understanding Anglo-Norman and Germanic Urbanization

  Writing around the year 1188, the Anglo-Norman and Welsh clergyman Gerald of Wales, in composing his Journey Through Wales, wrote 'the Welsh do not live in towns, villages or castles ... they pay no attention to commerce, shipping or industry'. However, as Gerald was undoubtedly aware, this was an already anachronistic depiction of Wales which, while perhaps reflective of Welsh society in the mid eleventh century, was highly inaccurate in Gerald¿s day. Prior to the incursions of Norman adventurers into Wales in the decades immediately after 1066 the Welsh landscape had been almost totally devoid of towns or urban development, by English or continental standards. However, by 1350, the Welsh landscape would feature c.100 towns and boroughs founded largely ¿ but not exclusively ¿ by Anglo-Norman conquerors, and the proportion of persons living in Wales and dwelling in urban communities would be equivalent to England or Spain (around 15 to 20 per cent). This transformation was accompanied by large-scale immigration from England, the linguistic and cultural Anglicization of large parts of lowland Wales in the vicinity of town foundations, the development of local and regional trade networks and, perhaps most importantly, the foundation of the overwhelming majority of the network of towns in Wales, as we have it today. Moreover, the urbanization of Wales was not a unique event in northern Europe, but was paralled by the Anglo-Norman urban colonization of Ireland and the urbanization of Prussia and the Baltic coastal regions by Germanic traders and settlers. These parallel colonial movements offer fertile scope for the construction of analytical comparasons between Wales, Ireland and the Baltic. The module covers: the rationale behind, and mechanics of, urban foundation; the relationships between urbanization, colonization and economic reorganization; urbanization and the formation of ethnic and cultural identities; the emergence of trade networks; institutionalized and non-institutionalized relationships between ethnicity and economic opportunity; architectural expressions of colonization, both domestic and eccleastical; and, throught the module, comparative aspects of Anglo-Norman and Germanic urbanization movements.

• HIH227 Medieval Britain 1250-1461

  This module on British history in the later medieval period investigates the relationship between England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France, raising questions about conquest, nationalism, patriotism and race. It will also look at the social, economic and cultural history of Britain (eg the rise of English as a literary language) as well as the internal problems each country faced as it battled against plague, revolts and civil war.

• HIH237 The Practice of History

  The purpose of the module is to encourage you to think more deeply about how historians work and, in particular, about how we as historians can locate and use primary historical sources effectively as a means of interpreting and understanding the past. During the module we will learn about the survival of historical evidence, how it is organised and made accessible to historians to undertake their research, and how to effectively locate and interpret it in your studies. We will consider how the process of doing historical research changes over time, in particular with the impact of recent developments like digitization. At the core of the module will be the work you undertake with others in your seminar group using a range of primary sources which your seminar tutor will introduce to you. As part of the module assessment you will also undertake your own primary source based research project using items from these collections. The module is designed strengthen your analytical skills and to help prepare you for the more extensive uses of primary evidence which you will encounter in final year special subjects and dissertation.

• HIMM00 Reading Medieval Manuscripts

  Medieval manuscript sources are crucial to our understanding of the Middle Ages. Research across the disciplines of medieval studies is grounded in the study and use of medieval books and documentary sources. This module aims to give students the skills, knowledge and confidence to engage with original manuscript sources of various types, from early Anglo-Saxon Gospel books to medieval chronicles, from illustrated books of hours to critical legal documents. Students will engage with these sources via digital and printed images and full-scale printed facsimiles, learning to recognise and transcribe medieval hands from all periods. Students will be given the chance to read original manuscripts during visits to the West Glamorgan Archive Service (Swansea) and the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth). This module assumes no prior knowledge of medieval manuscripts, nor any prior knowledge of the medieval languages featured in the manuscript samples, including Latin, Old English and Middle English.

• HIMM04 Introduction to Advanced Medieval Studies 2: Themes and Sources

  This module aims to apply the skills and approaches learned in the module HIMM01: Introduction to Advanced Medieval Studies 1: Skills and Approaches to a range of important themes in Medieval Studies, including gender, identity, laws and customs, spirituality, heritage. The module is interdisciplinary and draws on historical, literary and visual sources. The content of the module will be arranged in 2-weekly blocks, with the first week in each block dedicated to introducing students to the specific theme and the second week being used as a practical application of this knowledge to a source or text.

• ‘Ethnicity, law, urban development and identity: a comparative study of medieval Wales and Prussia’; National Agency for Academic Exchange, Poland (Narodow Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej). 2019 - 2021

  This is a prestigious Ulam Fellowship, from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, of £49,400, based at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń., £49,400

• ‘Jim Crow in Medieval Wales: a comparative approach to the long history of legal discrimination and segregation’; The British Academy. 2017 - 2019

  This project comprised pathbreaking work to identify systematically, to categorise and to analyse anti-Welsh discriminatory ‘race law’ in the Middle Ages –including a reassessment of exactly what that modern term would have meant in a medieval context., with Dr Teresa Phipps, £7,931

• ‘Publication of Court of Common Pleas records involving London and Londoners, 1399–1500’; Marc Fitch Fund 2009 - 2010

  This project made digitally available a translated edition of more than 6,000 records of lawsuits involving London and Londoners. These are now free to view on British History Online. , £10,000

• ‘London women and the economy before and after the Black Death’; Economic and Social Research Council. 2008 - 2009

  This project completed a quantitative study of London Women’s capacity to engage with the medieval Legal system before and after the Black Death of 1348–49. , £81,349

• Associate professor, Senior lecturer, Lecturer, Department of History, Swansea University

  October 2010 - Present

• Visiting fellow, Institute of History and Archival Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland

  January 2010 - July 2010

• Research officer, Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

  August 2006 - January 2010

• Economic History Society post-doctoral fellow medieval history, Faculty of Modern History, Oxford University

  October 2010 - Present

• Editor, Denbighshire Historical Society Transactions

  2015 - 2019

• Undergraduate programme director, history, Swansea University

  2015 - 2018

• ‘Credit and colonization in medieval Wales’

  October 2019

  Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, Germany

• ‘Women, attorneys and credit in late medieval England’

  May 2016

  Umeå University, Sweden