David Bruce Crouch, (born 31 October 1953) is a British historian and academic. From 2000 until his retirement in 2018, he was

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of Medieval History at the

University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hu ...

Academia

He graduated in history from the former University College, Cardiff, in 1975, and pursued a career in secondary school teaching in Mountain Ash, South Wales till 1983. While serving as a schoolteacher he completed a doctorate on the Anglo-Norman twin aristocrats, Waleran of Meulan and Robert of Leicester, subsequently published by Cambridge University Press. From 1984, he occupied research posts in the University of London until moving to a teaching position in North Riding College, later University College, Scarborough in 1990. In 2000, he transferred to the Department of History in the University of Hull as professor of medieval history. He has occupied visiting professorships in Poitiers and Milwaukee. From 2013, he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship and in 2015 he was a member of the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

, Princeton. Since retirement he has devoted his energies to the ongoing Victoria Counties of England series on Yorkshire East Riding, publishing a two volume study of Howdenshire wapentake and the reconstruction of a medieval Howdenshire gentry cartulary, constructing an edition from 17th-century antiquaries transcripts.

Corpus of work

Professor Crouch's main focus is on the social and political history of the period from 1000 to 1300, primarily in England and

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, with a particular emphasis on comparative studies of social structures between the various realms of Britain and continental France. His fullest statement on his theory that it was the formulation of nobility as a self-conscious aristocratic quality demanding social deference is to be found in his 2005 work ''The Birth of Nobility''. His idea is that once nobility was a quality that could be acquired and demonstrated by conduct and lifestyle as much as by birth, a cascade effect was triggered which produced a hierarchy of social classes organised by relative degrees of nobility. He sees this as happening in the generations on either side of the year 1200. From the beginning of his career he has also published on the medieval history of South East Wales and the diocese of Llandaff. In political history he has written influential biographies on King Stephen and William Marshal. He was a member of the academic team which edited and translated into English the contemporary medieval biography of Marshal His books on the aristocracy of England and France in the

High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history between and ; it was preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended according to historiographical convention ...

, have been characterised by his incorporation of English social history into the mainstream of continental scholarship.'The Pragmatic Origins of British Social History,' in, ''Die Deutung der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft in der Moderne'', ed. N. Fryde, P. Monnet, O.G. Oexle and L. Zygner (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 123-145

Honours

In 1986, Crouch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). In 2014, he was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (post-nominal letters FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in t ...

(FBA), the United Kingdom's

national academy A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, and serves as a public policy advisors, research ...

for the humanities and social sciences.

Books

* * 2nd edition 2002. * * * * * * * * * * (volume 2 in the Cambridge History of Britain series) * * *

References

External links

Biography
at the

home page {{DEFAULTSORT:Crouch, David 1953 births Living people Academics of the University of Hull Alumni of Cardiff University British medievalists Contributors to the Victoria County History Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of the Royal Historical Society Historians of monarchy and royalty