Edward James

Edward James is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at University College Dublin. Since working for his Oxford DPhil on the early medieval art and archaeology of south-west France (the area settled by the Goths in the fifth century), he has written books on early medieval France, on the Franks, on Roman and early medieval Britain, and, most recently, on Europe’s Barbarians, AD 200-600. He has published numerous papers on the archaeology, art and history of early medieval Europe. He has taught at Dublin and in York, and became Professor of Medieval History at Reading and then at University College Dublin.

In retirement he continues to work on the history of sixth-century Europe, being particularly interested in the author Gregory of Tours and in the city of Rome. He is also an enthusiastic reader of science fiction and fantasy, and published an award-winning history of science fiction for Oxford University Press in 1994. More recently he and Farah Mendlesohn (Anglia Ruskin University) co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction and the Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, and co-wrote A Short History of Fantasy. In 2014 he published a website on the science fiction and fantasy authors who took part in the Great War, and in 2015 he published his most recent book, on the American science fiction writer Lois McMaster Bujold. In 2017 the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts presented him with their Distinguished Scholarship Award.