The Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland is pleased to host this special lecture and the associated workshop on Wednesday 15 October, both funded by the Ford Bequest, to explore the topic of ‘global Britain’ in the early medieval world. Most colleagues will be familiar with narratives that globalize British history in terms of histories of empire, but Britain in the early middle ages was not a colonial metropolis, but rather the periphery of the old Roman empire. Important work, including much here at Oxford, is globalizing the history of early medieval Britain by exploring not just the material culture that indicates Britain’s participation in long-distance chains of trade and exchange, but also the evidence for inhabitants of early medieval Britain as emigrants.

Francesca Tinti is an expert on the history of the early English Church, contacts between Angl0-Saxon England and continental Europe, and the use of the vernacular. She is the author of Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (2010), The Forum Hoard of Anglo-Saxon Coins (2016) and Europe and the Anglo-Saxons (2021).