Fachbereich Geschichtswissenschaft
Involuntary Migration and Mobility: Hostages and Intellectual Exchange in the Early Medieval Northwest Atlantic Region

Dr. Lindy Brady, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Edge Hill University (UK), was a Resident Fellow in the Centre for Advanced Studies research cluster on ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ at the University of Tübingen in May 2022. Her fellowship project, ‘Involuntary Migration and Mobility: Hostages and Intellectual Exchange in the Early Medieval Northwest Atlantic Region’, was a comprehensive examination of hostages and mobility in the early medieval period (broadly speaking, from the late ‘migration era’ through to the end of the Viking Age) and the transcultural connections that resulted from such moments of involuntary movement. Focused on a series of case studies that appear as brief interludes embedded within longer chronicles or annals, this project explored the ways in which forced mobility was perceived to have brought about networks of communication and intellectual exchange across the early medieval North Atlantic region. Dr. Brady’s fellowship project at Tübingen was a preliminary study for her third monograph, tentatively entitled Accidental Travel: Communication and Exchange in the Early Middle Ages. This project illuminate the transcultural networks of knowledge and communication forged by accidental (e.g. shipwrecks) and involuntary (e.g. slavery) movement in the North Atlantic region during the early medieval period. 

You can find more information about Lindy Brady here.