Dr David Addison

My research focusses on the social and cultural history of religion, particularly Christianity, in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. 

I am presently engaged in a comparative project on the Atlantic regions of western Europe, drawing on case studies from Portugal, Galicia, and the Basque Country, through Aquitaine and Brittany, to Ireland and western Britain. This project has two main aims: firstly, to investigate the role played by monastic and ascetic structures in the institutionalisation of Christianity in these different regions; secondly, to trace the role that connectivity along the Atlantic seaboard played in cultural transmission (particularly of monastic texts) between the eastern Mediterranean and northern Europe. As part of this project, I have a strong interest in comparative historiography - that is, in understanding the ways in which different regional and national scholarly traditions have inflected our understanding of the past.

Prior to this, I worked chiefly on the Iberian Peninsula in the Suevic and Visigothic periods. My forthcoming monograph will illuminate the importance of ethical discourse in the assertion and contestation of religious power in late antique Iberia, and challenge institutionally focussed accounts of Christian history. Other publications arising from this research have addressed martyr cult, lay religion, and the history of Visigothic manuscripts.