Professor Alex Metcalfe

Alex is a historian of the medieval Mediterranean and Middle East with degrees in Classics (Oxford) and Arabic (Leeds). He has published on a wide range of topics relating to the Middle Ages, including religious conversion; water-resource management; the formation of cultural identities; numismatics, and even medieval magic tricks. However, he is best-known for his work on the political history of Sicily, Sardinia, south Italy, and North Africa.

For many years he was Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University during which he also held research posts at Oxford, Cyprus, Krakow, Cagliari, and Venice. He is currently a Research Fellow in the Department of History at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.