Rosamond Deborah McKitterick is one of Britain's foremost medieval historians, since 1999 Professor of Medieval History in the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

Sidney Sussex College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England.The college was founded in 1596 and named after its foundress, Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex. It was from its inception an avowedly Puritan foundation: some good and godlie moniment for the mainteynance...

. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Royal Historical Society

The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...

. Much of her work focuses on the Frankish

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...

 kingdoms in the 8th and 9th centuries and uses paleographical and manuscript studies to illuminate aspects of the political, cultural, intellectual, religious and social history of the early Middle Ages.

Rosamond McKitterick was born Rosamond Pierce in Chesterfield

Chesterfield

Chesterfield is a market town and a borough of Derbyshire, England. It lies north of Derby, on a confluence of the rivers Rother and Hipper. Its population is 70,260 , making it Derbyshire's largest town...

, Derbyshire, England, on 31 May 1949. From 1951 to 1956 she lived in Cambridge, England, where her father had a position at Magdalene College. In 1956 she moved with her family to Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 where she completed primary and secondary school and completed an honours degree at the University of Western Australia

University of Western Australia

The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...

. In 1971 she returned to Cambridge University to pursue her career. She holds the degrees of M.A., Ph.D., and Litt.D.

She married David John McKitterick, Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, and they have one daughter.

She was a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College...

 and then became a Professorial Fellow of Sidney Sussex. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts).

Selected books

• The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789-895 (1977)
• The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (1983)
• The Carolingians and the Written Word (1989)
• Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th to 9th Centuries. (Collected Studies; 452.) Aldershot: Variorum, (1994)
• The Frankish Kings and Culture in the Early Middle Ages (1995)
• History and Memory in the Carolingian World (2004)
• Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2006)
• Charlemagne: the formation of a European identity (2008)

Books as editor

• (ed.) The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (1990)
• (ed.) Carolingian Culture: emulation and innovation (1994)
• (ed.) The New Cambridge Medieval History, II: c.700 - c.900 (1995)
• (ed., with Roland Quinault) Edward Gibbon and Empire Cambridge University Press (1997)
• (ed.) The Early Middle Ages, 400-1000 (2001)
• (ed.) Atlas of the Medieval World (2004)