Roger J. H. Collins is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 medievalist, currently an honorary fellow in history at the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

.

Collins studied at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 (Queen's

The Queen's College, Oxford

The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...

 and Saint Cross Colleges) under Peter Brown

Peter Brown (historian)

Peter Robert Lamont Brown is Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. His principal contributions to the discipline have been in the field of late antiquity and, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe.-Life:Peter Brown was born in...

 and John Michael Wallace-Hadrill

John Michael Wallace-Hadrill

John Michael Wallace-Hadrill CBE was Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of Manchester , a Senior Research Fellow of Merton College in the University of Oxford , Chichele Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford and a Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford...

. He then taught ancient and medieval history at the universities of Liverpool

University of Liverpool

The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...

 and Bristol

University of Bristol

The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...

. He arrived at the University of Edinburgh in 1994 and joined the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities before becoming an honorary fellow in the Department of History (now the School of History, Classics and Archaeology) in 1998.

His research has primarily concerned the Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...

, with an emphasis on Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, but also the Franks

Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...

. His studies on the Basques and the Papacy (ongoing) have extended beyond this medieval period into the modern. His most recent publication is a book on the seventh- and eighth-century versions of the Chronicle of Fredegar

Chronicle of Fredegar

The Chronicle of Fredegar is a chronicle that is a primary source of events in Frankish Gaul from 584 to around 641. Later authors continued the history to the coronation of Charlemagne and his brother Carloman on 9 October 768....

for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Monumenta Germaniae Historica

The Monumenta Germaniae Historica is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500.The society sponsoring the series was established by the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom...

.

Select bibliography

The following select list of writing. Only first printings and English versions are noted, as well as the latest revisions.

• Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400–1000 (London: Macmillans, 1983, 2nd ed. 1995)
• The Basques (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986, 2nd ed. 1990)
• The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–797 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, 2nd ed. 1994)
• Early Medieval Europe, 300–1000 (London: Macmillans, 1991, 2nd ed. 1999)
• Law, Culture and Regionalism in Early Medieval Spain (Aldershot: Variorum, 1992)
• (with Judith McClure) Bede's Ecclesiastical History: Introduction and notes, together with translations of Bede's Letter to Egbert and his Greater Chronicle (Oxford: Oxford University Press World's Classics, 1994, 2nd ed. 1996)
• Fredegar (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996)
• Oxford Archaeological Guide to Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Charlemagne (London: Macmillans, 1998)
• Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)
• (edited with Patrick Wormald and Donald Bullough) Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies presented to Professor J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983)
• (edited with Peter Godman) Charlemagne's Heir: New Approaches to the Reign of Louis the Pious (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
• (edited with Anthony Goodman) Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict and Coexistence (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002)
• Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy (New York: Basic Books 2009)