Julia M. H. Smith

Julia Mary Howard Smith, FSA Scot, FRSE, FRHistS (born 29 May 1956) is an English medievalist who was the Chichele Professor of Medieval History at All Souls College, Oxford from 2016 to 2025.^[1] She was formerly Edwards Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow.^[2]

Julia M. H. Smith FSA Scot FRSE FRHistS
Born	Julia Mary Howard Smith (1956-05-29) 29 May 1956 (age 69) Cambridge, England
Occupation(s)	Historian and academic
Title	Chichele Professor of Medieval History
Spouse	Hamish Scott ​ ​ (m. 2005; died 2022)​
Academic background
Education	South Hampstead High School
Alma mater	Newnham College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Thesis	Carolingian Brittany (1985)
Doctoral advisor	J. M. Wallace-Hadrill
Academic work
Institutions	University of Sheffield University of St Andrews University of Manchester Trinity College, Connecticut Newnham College, Cambridge University of Glasgow All Souls College, Oxford
Notable works	Europe after Rome: a New Cultural History 500–1000

Early life and education

Smith was born on 29 May 1956 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.^[3] She was educated at South Hampstead High School, an all-girls Private school in London.^[3] She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1975 to 1978, followed by postgraduate study at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1978 to 1981.^[1] Her doctoral supervisor was J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, one of Smith's predecessors in the Chichele chair.^[4]

Academic career

Smith lectured at the University of Sheffield, the University of St Andrews, and the University of Manchester in the 1980s. In 1986, she was appointed an assistant professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. From 1988-89 Smith held the Kathleen Hughes Memorial Research Fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge, named in honour of Smith's undergraduate director of studies.^[4] In 1995, she joined the University of St Andrews as Reader in Medieval History. In 2005, she was appointed Edwards Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow.^[5]

In 2016, Smith was appointed Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford and elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She gave her inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor on 31 January 2019: it was titled "Thinking with Things: Reframing Relics in the Early Middle Ages".^[6] Smith retired from the chair in 2025 and was succeeded by Alice Rio.^[7]

She has held a range of international research fellowships. From 1999 to 2000 she was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study and in 2001 and 2013 she held a fellowship at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton.^[1]

Personal life

In 2005, Smith married fellow historian Hamish Scott.^[3]

Honours and awards

In 2010 she delivered the Raleigh Lecture on the subject of relics in the Medieval West.^[8] In 2011 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[9] Smith delivered the Birbkbeck lecture series at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2018, on the subject "The Religious Life of Things in Early Christianity".^[10]

Selected publications

• Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.
• "Einhard: the sinner and the saint", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Sixth series), 13, 2003, pp. 55–77.
• Europe after Rome: a New Cultural History 500–1000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. ISBN 9780192892638
• Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600 – c. 1100, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 9780521817752 (Edited with T. F. X. Noble)
• "Portable Christianity: relics in the Medieval west (c. 700 – c. 1200)" in Proceedings of the British Academy, 2012, 181 . pp. 143–167. ISSN 0068-1202