Dr Mike Bintley

Overview

Biography

Mike’s research and teaching cover the early middle ages. He has expertise in the literature, material culture, and archaeology of early medieval England and Scandinavia, and a research focus on landscape, environment, and settlements. He joined Birkbeck in 2018, after teaching at UCL, Oxford, and Canterbury Christ Church University.

Professional activities

Mike is series editor of ‘Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages’ for Boydell and Brewer, a founder and co-chair of the Northern/Early Medieval Conference Series, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is also the current chair of Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland.

Professional memberships

• International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England

• Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland

• Viking Society for Northern Research

Honours and awards

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, The Royal Historical Society, November 2016
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Advance HE, November 2016

Research

Research interests

• Texts and Material Culture
• Landscapes
• Old English and Old Norse
• Environment
• Ecotheory and ecocriticism
• Mind and cognitive approaches to textual and material cultures
• Settlements and the built environment

Research overview

The relationship between the material world, literature, and other kinds of writing is at the heart of my research. My particular interests include landscape, environment, settlements, religion, materiality, ecotheory and ecocriticism, mind, and cognitive approaches to literature and material culture.

After studying a BA in English Literature and an MA in Medieval Literature, I wrote my PhD thesis on ‘Trees and Woodland in Anglo-Saxon Culture’ (’09), supervised in the Department of English Language and Literature and at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.

In my first edited book Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World (OUP, 2013), and my monograph Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England (Boydell, 2015), I investigated the role of trees and woodland in the belief systems of early medieval England before and after the conversion to Christianity, and explored the way in which this aspect of the environment shaped contemporary thought and practice.

I went on to co-edit three interdisciplinary volumes that each, in their own way, consider human interactions with aspects of the material world: Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia (Boydell, 2015); Sensory Perception in the Medieval West (Brepols, 2016), and Stasis in the Medieval West? Questioning Change and Continuity (Palgrave, 2017).

In collaboration with Professor Richard North I produced Andreas: an Edition (Liverpool University Press, 2016) for the Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies series. This is the first parallel text and translation of this important Old English poem, in which I discuss the environment and landscape of the city of Mermedonia, a forbidding domain inhabited by pagan anthropophagi. 

I went on to work on the HLF-funded project ‘Finding Eanswythe: the Life and Afterlife of an Anglo-Saxon Saint’ in Folkestone. This community heritage and archaeology project focused on Folkestone’s patron saint, a Kentish princess connected with the foundation of the seventh century minster, and led to the dating of her supposed relics to the mid-seventh century.

Last year I published my second monograph, Settlements and Strongholds: Texts and Landscapes in Early Medieval England (Brepols 2020), which addresses connections and disjunctions between representations of the constructed landscape in early medieval English texts and evidence for their form and function in the archaeological record.

I am currently co-editing a volume of essays with Dr Pippa Salonius entitled The Surrounding Forest: Tree as Symbol and Metaphor at the Time of the European Middle Ages, and co-authoring Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages with Dr Kate Franklin. My current long-term book project is provisionally entitled Minds in the Landscape: Texts, Environment, and Material Culture in Early Medieval England. I am also currently writing several article-length works on water, woodlands, and topography in Old English, Old Norse, and early Middle English texts.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Medieval and Early Modern Worlds

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Mike has supervised doctoral work on medieval kingship, landscapes, and familial relationships, and is currently supervising work on ideology and performance. He welcomes proposals from students interested in working on any aspects of the early Middle Ages related to landscapes, environment, ecotheory/ecocriticism, and interdisciplinary approaches to textual and material cultures.

Teaching

Mike has taught Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and the History of the Language at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and has supervised undergraduate work on literature from the early middle ages to the present day.

This year he is teaching on the following modules taught on BA programmes in the Department of English, Theatre, and Creative Writing, and on the MA in Medieval Literature and Culture:

- The Arts: Perspectives and Possibilities (Foundation Year)

- Doing English (BA)

- Reading Literature (BA)

- Storytelling (BA)

- Transcultural Encounters (BA)

- Medieval and Renaissance Body, Mind, and Soul (BA)

- Medieval Text and Intertext (MA)

- Approaching Research into Medieval Culture (MA)

- Reading and Writing the Contemporary (MFA)

Publications

Business and community

Media

I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

• Early medieval landscapes
• Early medieval environment
• Old English literature