Rate My Professor Matthew Innes

Matthew Innes is a Professor of History who previously served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Birkbeck, University of London. Educated at the University of Cambridge, he obtained a BA in History with a double first in 1991 and a PhD in 1996, supervised by Rosamond McKitterick. His career began with a Junior Research Fellowship at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1994, followed by appointments at the Universities of Birmingham and York. In 1999, he joined Birkbeck as Lecturer in History, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2002, Reader in 2004, and Professor in 2006. He held significant administrative roles including Head of the School of Historical Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Pro-Vice-Master with responsibility for strategy from 2008, Vice Master from 2013 (later retitled Deputy Vice-Chancellor), and served on the college's board of governors as an academic representative from 2005 to 2009.

Innes's research focuses on the history of western Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the eleventh century, specializing in economic, social, and cultural history. Key publications include State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400-1000 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which received the Gladstone Book Prize from the Royal Historical Society; Introduction to Early Medieval Western Europe, 300-900: The Sword, the Plough and the Book (Routledge, 2007); and The Carolingian World (Cambridge University Press, 2011, co-authored with Marios Costambeys and Simon MacLean). He has co-edited The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2004, with Yitzhak Hen) and Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2013, with Warren C. Brown, Marios Costambeys, and Adam J. Kosto). Innes was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Outstanding Research in 2004. He has participated in public lectures, appearing on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time on the Carolingian Renaissance (2006) and the Battle of Tours (2014).