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Dr Patrick Lantschner

Patrick Lantschner has been at UCL since 2015. He works and teaches on Europe and the Islamic world from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and is especially interested in comparative and transnational approaches. Before coming to UCL, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and taught at Cambridge. 

Patrick is interested in societies in which the state is but one of many players. He has worked on internal political conflicts and revolts, with a particular interest in the degree to which conflicts within societies were a departure from, or rooted in, ordinary politics. His book The Logic of Political Conflict in Medieval Cities studied revolts and other forms of political conflict in cities in Northern and Central Italy and the Southern Low Countries. The book argued that strife could be so pervasive that distinct systems of conflict crystallised in different cities around particular patterns of conflict. This book received the 2016 Bronisław Geremek Prize for an outstanding first book. 

For his current research project Patrick studies the political order of Christian and Islamic cities in Western Eurasia in c.900-1500. European cities have often been seen as exceptional constructs in world history, but Patrick’s findings suggest that European cities shared important characteristics with cities in the Islamic sphere of the Mediterranean world. Cities across this region were important political arenas in their own right. They have often been interpreted as the handmaidens of states, but rulers and governments actually often struggled to control cities and had to come to terms with a city-based political order that continued to exist into the early modern period. Until the book is out, you can read more about Patrick’s findings in two articles in The English Historical Review and Past&Present.

Patrick is one of the editors of the three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Europe for which he co-edits the medieval and early modern volume.

PhD supervision

Patrick is happy to hear from potential students who want to embark on a doctorate on topics that fall within his geographical and chronological remit. Please get in touch at the start of the academic year in which you wish to apply.

Patrick acts as the supervisor or co-supervisor of Caitlin John (burial practices and cemeteries in late medieval Cairo and Paris), Emma Zürcher (medieval accounts of crusading defeats), Alexander Good (the cult of St Lazarus in medieval Europe), Joseph Strasz (thirteenth-century Italian literary manuscripts), Hugo Raine (communal political and economic thinking in thirteenth-century Italy) and Nicholas Munn (masculinities in Renaissance Venice). 

Major publications

For a full list of publications, see Patrick's Iris profile.

Teaching