Professor Stephen Baxter

Research interests:

My research is principally concerned with the England and Normandy in the long eleventh century, on both sides of the Channel and either side of 1066. My first book, The Earls of Mercia, explored how a powerful family based in the midlands negotiated the vicissitudes of English politics for nearly a century before succumbing to the Normans in the 1070s. I found this a fruitful way to approach many wider themes, such as the way noble men and women accumulated landed wealth and lordships to compete for power.

My current book project aims to something similar for the Normans: it traces the fortunes of a family whose members came to prominence in Normandy in the late tenth century, played a leading role in the conquest of England, acquired a vast cross-channel lordship in the process, but eventually gambled and lost everything in civil wars. For the past decade, I have been involved in a major research project, ‘The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England’, which aims to identify all the people who lived in England before 1066, including all those named in Domesday Book; and I am currently involved in a project called ‘The Conqueror’s Commissioners’, which will produce a new edition, translation and introduction to Exon Domesday – a manuscript which is of crucial importance for understanding the genesis, nature and purpose of the Conqueror’s great survey.