Anders Winroth, newly named as the Birgit Baldwin Professor of History, specializes in the history of medieval Europe.
Winroth’s research is focused specifically on the cultural, intellectual, and legal history of the European High Middle Ages and on the economic and social history of early medieval Scandinavia.
Winroth, who received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, joined the Yale faculty as an assistant professor in 1998. He has served as a full professor of history and chair of the Medieval Studies Program. Prior to his new appointment, he was the Forst Family Professor of History.
Winroth is the author of “The Age of the Vikings,” “The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe” and “The Making of Gratian’s ‘Decretum.’” The latter, about the first scholastic canon law textbook produced in the Middle Ages, was awarded the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication by Yale, and the John Nicholas Brown Prize by the Medieval Academy of America.
The Yale professor is co-editor of “Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville” and “Charters, Cartularies, and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West.” He serves as president of the Institute for Medieval Canon Law, an organization that promotes research in and spreads knowledge of medieval law.
In 2003, Winroth was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which honors individuals for the originality and creativity of their work and the potential to do more in the future.
The Birgit Baldwin Professorship was established by the parents and family of Birgit Baldwin ’82 B.A., ’86 M.A. to commemorate her name and to further scholarship in her field of study. Baldwin was completing her thesis for a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Yale when she died in an automobile accident.