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Andrew Buck BA (hons), MA, PhD, FHEA, FRHistS

Dr Andrew Buck

(he/him)

BA (hons), MA, PhD, FHEA, FRHistS

Lecturer in Medieval History

School of History, Archaeology and Religion

Email
BuckA@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29225 12378
Campuses
John Percival Building, Room 4.32, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am Director of the Cardiff Centre for the Crusades and I am primarily a historian of the Crusades and the Latin East, with particular expertise in the formation and cultures of the crusading polities of the Levant and Syria in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. My PhD research focused on the twelfth-century principality of Antioch (modern day Turkey and Syria) and its frontier nature, exploring the ways in which power was constructed and expressed in a period of distinct military and political pressure. Since then, I have turned to considering the social aspects of crusading, with an emphasis on the outpouring of writing that emerged in response to crusading, as well as the role of memory in shaping and transmitting dialogues around crusade and settlement, both in the Latin East and in the Latin West. My current work focuses on the Chronicon of William of Tyre, an account of the First Crusade and the crusader states produced in twelfth-century Jerusalem, and the wider ways medieval Latin Christian authors wrote about Outremer as a place of settlement.

Key Research Interests:

  • The Crusades and the Latin East
  • Interculturality
  • Medieval Frontiers
  • Medieval Historical Writing
  • Power and Authority
  • Medieval Gender
  • Memory Studies

Publication

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Articles

Book sections

Books

Research

Creating Outremer: William of Tyre and the First Crusade

My current research is two-pronged and looks to consider the Historical Construction of the Crusading East in Medieval Latin Christendom. In doing so, it seeks to revolutionise our understanding of the role played by crusading settlements in shaping European dialogues on colonialism and interculturality.

The first prong, which builds on earlier work I carried out into crusading memory in the Latin East, is a study of a First Crusade account produced in Latin-held Jerusalem by Archbishop William of Tyre (d.1184). Though William’s wider account of the crusader states’ history, the Chronicon, is well known, his version of the crusade has been relatively overlooked as derivative. With the rise of literary-historical approaches, however, the chance has arisen to re-examine this portion of his narrative as a cultural artefact. The groundwork for this has been laid by a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at University College Dublin, which has revealed how William used the crusade’s story to consolidate social identities, as well as the Latin East’s political legitimacy. Encoded within accounts of the events behind the summoning of the crusade, as well as the main city conquests (Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem), are dialogues on the legitimate transfer of power away from the local population. They contrast Eastern Christians, who welcomed the crusaders as their saviours, the Muslim enemy, accused of polluting of Christian spaces, and the crusaders, presented as God’s chosen people. This text offers, in other words, a highly valuable insight into the centrality of conquest and settlement to identity-formation in the Latin East. I have already begun publishing products from this research, including a book chapter (in a volume I am co-editing) on William’s use of oral/aural modes of story-telling when detailing key moments of power transfer, and an article on how William used the crusade’s genesis as a tool for identity creation.

The Historical Construction of the Crusading East in Medieval Latin Christendom

Inter-linked with this close examination of William’s text, and in line with my current research foci on memory and identity formation, is a wide-ranging plan to trace wider conceptions of Outremer’s existence. This research will lead to a monograph and several other publications. An important part of this will be renewed analysis of narratives composed in both the Latin East and those written in the Latin West, including texts which, while not primarily concerned with the Holy Land, nevertheless incorporated its history. A significant aspect will be discussion of lesser-known texts, some still only extant in manuscript form or outdated editions, that have been side-lined by modern scholarship due to their lack of value for empirical reconstruction but have gained new worth through the emergence of literary-historical approaches. This research will build a wider sense of Latin Christian attitudes towards settlement and conquest over non-Latin peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean. It will do so by homing-in on key thematic aspects, such as narratives of conquest, kinship, inter-faith warfare, and intercultural contact, with certain texts or genres used as a prism through which to direct such an analysis. A proof-of-concept article on a mid-twelfth-century narrative on the Latin East produced in north-eastern France has recently been published in the journal Speculum while there is a forthcoming critical edition and translation of a new source on the Latin East forthcoming in the journal Crusades.

Teaching

BA Teaching (as organiser)

HS1112 Medieval Worlds

HS6302 Crusading Worlds

MA Teaching

Medieval Empires

Sources and Evidence: Advanced Historical Research Skills

Biography

Education and Qualifications

2005-2009:  BA (hons) History and MA Medieval History, University of East Anglia

2010-2014:  PhD in Medieval History, Queen Mary University of London

Honours and Awards

2019-2022:  Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship, University College Dublin

Career Overview

Before coming to Cardiff, I spent several years teaching at Queen Mary University of London, as well as working there as Student Engagement Tutor. Between 2019-22 I was Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin working on a project entitled 'Creating Outremer: William of Tyre and the Writing of History in the Latin East'.

Professional Memberships

Member of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (since 2009)

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (since 2017)

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (since 2023)

Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (since 2018)

Supervisions

  • The Crusades and the Latin East
  • Interculturality
  • Medieval Frontiers
  • Medieval Historical Writing
  • Power and Authority
  • Medieval Gender
  • Memory Studies

External profiles