Her work explores the cultures,literatures and languages of the medieval north,particularly Viking Age history,Old Norse-Icelandic literature and mythology,and the British Isles in the first millennium CE. Her most recent book, Embers of the Hands:Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile,2024)[2] was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize,[3] longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction,[4] and chosen as a Times History Book of the Year.[5]
Academia
Eleanor Barraclough studied at the University of Cambridge,in the Department of Anglo-Saxon,Norse and Celtic,where she completed an MA (Cantab),an MPhil,and a PhD.[6] She then moved to the University of Oxford,where she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of English,[7] and an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow at The Queen's College.[8] From there she moved to Durham University,where she was associate professor in Medieval History and Literature.[9] She is currently Reader in Public History at Bath Bath Spa University.[10] She held an AHRC Leadership Grant from 2020 to 2024,[11] for a multidisciplinary study of forests in early northern Germanic cultures.
Broadcasting
In 2013,Barraclough was chosen as one of ten BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinkers,[12] in a competition to develop a new generation of academics who can bring the best of university research and scholarly ideas to a broad audience through the media and public engagement.
Since then,she has worked extensively for the BBC,including presenting Beyond the Walls:In Search of the Celts for BBC4,[13]Free Thinking for Radio 3,[14] Time Travellers for Radio 3’s Essential Classics[15] and many documentaries for Radio 3 and Radio 4,[16] for series including Costing the Earth,Sunday Feature,Illuminated,Open Country and On Your Farm. Eleanor appeared as a guest on Radio 3's Private Passions where she discussed her musical training at the Royal College of Music's Junior Department.[17]
Writing
Embers of the Hands:Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile,2024) was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize,[18] longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction,[19] and chosen as a Times History Book of the Year.[20] It has been translated into many languages,including Norwegian[21] and Spanish.[22]
Beyond the Northlands:Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas (Oxford University Press,2016) was chosen as one of Dominic Sandbrook’s Top Twenty History Books of All Time for the Daily Mail and a Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement.
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