Chris Wickham taught at Birmingham for nearly thirty years before moving to Oxford as Chichele Professor in 2005. He was Head of Department from 2009 to 2012, and Head of the Humanities Division in 2015 and 2016. He returned to Birmingham as pasrt-time Professor of Medieval History from 2016 until his retirement in 2021. He was Director of the British School at Rome in 2020-2021.
an impressive book that turns the history of the Mediterranean upside down...an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging reinterpretation of the Mediterranean...a monumental achievement that fully deserves to take its place among classic studies of Mediterranean history. * David Abulafia, Times Literary Supplement * The Donkey and the Boat is an impressive book that turns the history of the Mediterranean upside down...The Donkey and the Boat is an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging reinterpretation of the Mediterranean at a crucial point in its revival, after the relatively quiet centuries that some of us, though not Chris Wickham, still call the fall of the Roman Empire. Confidently crossing back and forth between the Christian East and West and the Islamic world, his book is a monumental achievement that fully deserves to take its place among classic studies of Mediterranean history. * David Abulafia, Times Literary Supplement * The Donkey and the Boat is a comprehensive and groundbreaking study. Wickham argues that our understanding of this period has been hampered by outdated assumptions and restricted data sets. It is a major contribution to an understanding of the Mediterranean economy during the Middle Ages and is highly recommended to readers with an interest in this field of study. * Richard Tuttle, University of Edinburgh, World History Encyclopedia *