Dr John Merrington

BA (Hons), MSt, MSc, DPhil

History

Fifty Pound Fellow since 2026

John is currently a Fifty Pound Fellow, elected in 2026. Prior to this he was an Examination Fellow at All Souls from 2018 to 2025.

Research Areas

Restraint and Reform: the Five Senses in Thought and Practice in Latin Europe, C. 500-900

The Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages; Archives; Anthropology; Gregory of Tours

Selected Publications

‘Bede and Gregory of Tours: a Reconsideration’

English Historical Review (2024)

‘The Building Projects and the Histories of Gregory of Tours’

Early Medieval Europe 30/2 (2022), 159-84

‘The Nature of the Self in Fifth-Century Gaul’

Centre for Intellectual History Blog Post

Background

Examination Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (from 2018 to 2025)
Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval History (from 2020 to 2024)
Master of Science in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology (from 2019 to 2020)
Master of Studies in Medieval History (from 2018 to 2019)
Undergraduate, Somerville College, Oxford (from 2015 to 2018)

Awards

Winner of Early Medieval Europe First Publication Prize (2022)
Awarded a Distinction in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology Programme (2020)
Awarded a Distinction in Medieval History MSt programme (2019)
Somerville College Alumni Scholarship (2018)
Gibbs Book Prize (2018)
Somerville College Principal’s Prize (2018)
Mary Somerville Prize (2018)
Shaw Lefèvre Scholarship (2016, 2018)
College Prize (2016)

Teaching

I have taught the following undergraduate courses:

Outline courses on European and World History from 250 to 1300 and the History of the British Isles from 300 to 1100.
Tacitus and Augustine components of ‘Tacitus to Weber’
Foreign Texts: Einhard and Asser
Optional Subject: Alfred and the Vikings
Special Subject: Francia in the Age of Clovis and Gregory of Tours
Disciplines of History

I have taught the following Master’s course: