Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages
Raised Faculty Building
University of Cambridge
Sidgwick Avenue
Cambridge
CB3 9DA
United Kingdom
Thomas Foerster holds a Dr. Phil. In Medieval History from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Since defending his thesis in 2008, he has worked in different post-doctoral positions at the University of Bergen, Norway and at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, Italy. He has also worked as visiting scholar at the German Historical Institute in Paris, France and at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He is currently working with Professor Chris Young and Dr Mark Chinca on the AHRC-funded Kaiserchronik project.
- Historical writing in twelfth-century Europe, especially the development of universal chronicles
- Political culture and political ideologies in early and high medieval Europe
- Twelfth- and thirteenth-century history of Germany, France, Italy, England and Scandinavia
After working on the construction of cultural identities in high medieval Scandinavia, the impact of conquests on political culture in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Germany, Italy and France, and more theoretical approaches to political myth in the ‘Renaissance of the Twelfth Century’, Thomas has shifted his focus increasingly towards the field of historical writing. In recent years, he has studied primarily chronicles and political ideologies in twelfth-century Europe. A particularly important chronicler in this field was Godfrey of Viterbo, whose works blended the ideologies he developed for the Hohenstaufen emperors with universal history.
- Vergleich und Identität: Selbst- und Fremddeutung im Norden des hochmittelalterlichen Europa, (Europa im Mittelalter, 14), Berlin 2009.
- Godfrey of Viterbo and his Readers: Imperial Tradition and Universal History in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Thomas Foerster (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West), Farnham 2015.
- Norman Tradition and Transcultural Heritage: Exchange of Cultures in the ‘Norman’ Peripheries of Medieval Europe, ed. Stefan Burkhardt and Thomas Foerster, Farnham 2013.
- ‘Ideas of Empire: Saxo Grammaticus and Godfrey of Viterbo’, in: The Writing of History in Scandinavia and its European Context, ed. Thomas Heebøll-Holm and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn (Durham Publications in Medieval and Renaissance Studies), [forthcoming] Toronto 2016.
- ‘Imagining the Baltic: Mental Mapping in the Works of Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, Eleventh – Thirteenth Centuries’, in: Imagined Communities on the Baltic Rim, from the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Wojtek Jezierski and Lars Hermanson, Amsterdam 2016, 37-58.
- ‘Bouvines 1214: Ein Konflikt zweier europäischer Netzwerke’, in: 1214-2014: Bouvines, histoire et mémoire d'une bataille/Bouvines, eine Schlacht zwischen Geschichte und Erinnerung: Approches et comparaisons franco-allemandes/Deutsch-französische Ansätze und Vergleiche, ed. Pierre Monnet, Bochum 2016, 69-90.
- ‘Twilight of the Emperors: Godfrey’s Pantheon and the Hohenstaufen Legacy in Thirteenth-Century Castile and England’, in: Godfrey of Viterbo and his Readers: Imperial Tradition and Universal History in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Thomas Foerster (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West), Farnham 2015, 67-87.
- 'Crusaders and Apostles: Structural and Typological Elements in Otto of St. Blasien's Chronicle' in: La typologie biblique comme forme de pensée dans l’historiographie médiévale, ed. Marek Thue Kretschmer (Textes et Études du Moyen Âge, 75), Turnhout 2014, 151-66.
- [with Jan Rüdiger]: ‘Aemulatio – Recusatio: Strategien der Akkulturation im europäischen Norden’, in: Akkulturation im Mittelalter, ed. Reinhard Härtel (Vorträge und Forschungen 78), Ostfildern 2014, 441-98.
- ‘“...um in der Gerechtigkeit nicht weniger stark wie in der Schlacht zu erscheinen“: Königtum und Recht in den Gesta Danorum des Saxo Grammaticus’, in: Macht und Spiegel der Macht: Herrschaft in Europa im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert vor dem Hintergrund der Chronistik, ed. Norbert Kersken and Grischa Vercamer (Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau, Quellen und Studien 27), Wiesbaden 2013, 103-18.
- ‘Imperial Tradition and Norman Heritage: Cultures of Violence and Cruelty’, in: Norman Tradition and Transcultural Heritage: Exchange of Cultures in the ‘Norman’ Peripheries of Medieval Europe, ed. Stefan Burkhardt and Thomas Foerster, Farnham 2013, 161-88.
- ‘Political Myths and Political Culture in Twelfth Century Europe’, in: Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrative Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Hartwin Brandt, Benjamin Pohl, W. Maurice Sprague and Lina K. Hörl (Bamberger Historische Studien, 9), Bamberg 2012, 83-115.
- ‘Der Prophet und der Kaiser: Staufische Herrschaftsvorstellungen am Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in: Staufisches Kaisertum im 12 Jahrhundert: Konzepte – Netzwerke – Politische Praxis, ed. Stefan Burkhardt, Thomas Metz, Bernd Schneidmüller and Stefan Weinfurter, Regensburg 2010, 253-76.
- ‘Poppo’s Ordeal and the Conversion of the Danes: The Transition of a Myth in Latin and Old Norse Historiography’, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 39/156 (2009), 28-45.
- ‘Romanorum et regni Sicilie imperator: Zum Anspruch Kaiser Heinrichs VI. auf das normannische Königreich Sizilien’, Archiv für Diplomatik 54 (2008), 37-46.
