Jonathan Shepard | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1948 (age 76–77) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | New College, Oxford |
| Thesis | Byzantium and Russia in the Eleventh Century: A Study in Political and Ecclesiastical Relations (1974 [1] ) |
| Doctoral advisor | Dimitri Obolensky |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge |
| Notable students | Peter Frankopan |
| Notable works | The Emergence of Rus,750–1200 (with Simon Franklin) |
Jonathan Shepard FRHistS (born 1948) is a British historian specialising in early medieval Russia,the Caucasus,and the Byzantine Empire. He is regarded as a leading authority in Byzantine studies and on the Kievan Rus. [2] He specialises in diplomatic and archaeological history of the early Kievan period. [3] Shepard received his doctorate in 1973 from Oxford University and was a lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge. Among other works,he is co-author (with Simon Franklin) of The Emergence of Rus,750–1200 (1996),and editor of The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008).
Among Shepard's theories is that the breakdown in Byzantine-Khazar relations and the shift in Byzantine foreign policy towards allying with the Pechenegs and the Rus against Khazaria was a result of the Khazar conversion to Judaism.