Janet L. Nelson

After spending most of my schooldays in the Lake District and holidays in Scotland, I was offered a place to read History at Newnham College, Cambridge (BA 1961-4, Ph.D. 1965-7). I have lived my adult life in London. I taught for nearly 40 years at King’s College London, where I found teaching and research in the Department of History deeply fulfilling, and my colleagues congenial. In retirement after 2008, I have continued to be research-active. I married Howard Nelson in 1965 (marriage dissolved 2010), and we had two children, Lizzie (1972) and Billy (1974). Since the births of my five grandchildren, Eli (2000), Ruth (2002), Martha (2006), Dorie (2008), and John Paul (2018), I have involved myself in each and all of their lives. My research has centred on early medieval European themes: politics and ritual, women’s history and gender, ecclesiastical, social and cultural history. As my publications suggest, I tend to stick to choices, once made. My preferred genres are articles rather than books, collaborative and interdisciplinary projects rather than solo ones. Since the 1980s, I have made substantial contributions to such large collective projects as The Transformation of the Roman World, funded by the European Science Foundation, in the 1990s; and co-directed a pioneering digital database, The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, involving collaborative research in the digital humanities, in the early 2000s. In recent years, I have published work with archaeologists (2015, 2018, 2020(a) and 2020(b)). King and Emperor, a New Life of Charlemagne, was awarded a Daily Telegraph and BBC History Book of The Year for 2019.