Jean Dunbabin

The Oxford that Jean Dunbabin entered as an undergraduate had many medieval historians, but perhaps only two identifiable ‘schools’. One circle centred on K.B. MacFarlane and topics relating to English landed society and monarchy. The other consisted of scholars such as Richard Hunt, W.A. Pantin, Marjorie Reeves, Richard Southern and Beryl Smalley. These historians leaned towards intellectual and cultural history written from manuscripts. Since Oxford tutors were wedded to a conservative syllabus which put English and ‘European’ (that is, Continental) political institutional history in the foreground, however, a distinctive blend of political and intellectual history resulted. Dunbabin’s research supervisor was the intellectual historian Daniel Callus, a Dominican fully integrated into the group of medievalist dons just mentioned. Though her own background was in Scottish Presbyterianism, it seems to have been a harmonious academic relationship. An earlier influence must have been her undergraduate tutor Beryl Smalley, an outstanding embodiment of the combination of intellectual with social and institutional history. As Smalley’s generation died away—Richard Southern was the last from that golden age in post—medieval studies in Oxford turned in different directions, but the tradition of the ‘intellectual-political school’ was maintained by Jean Dunbabin (and has been continued after her retirement by Hannah Skoda and Dunbabin’s pupil Matthew Kempshall). Dunbabin’s versatility in bringing intellectual and wider history together is mirrored by the selection of EHR articles in this special issue, which cross the lines between intellectual, cultural, political and institutional history. The purpose of this introductory essay is to highlight some of her own most important contributions

Art history · Cultural history · Economic history · History of religions · Intellectual history · Monarchy · Political history · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Syllabus · African history and culture studies · Anthropology · Classics · History · Law