KU News Release

Crusades historian to speak at KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities

LAWRENCE — Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor Emeritus of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, will speak at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas.

Riley-Smith is one of the world’s most influential historians of the crusades. His lecture is titled “Some Modern Approaches to the History of the Crusades.”

Riley-Smith is the author, co-author or editor of more than 10 books and countless articles in scholarly and popular journals and magazines. Some of his most influential books include “The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading” (1986); “The Crusades: A Short History” (1987; second edition as “The Crusades” 2005); “The First Crusaders, 1095-1131” (1997; 2000); and “Hospitallers: The History of the Order of St. John” (1999).

Educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he completed his doctorate, Riley-Smith taught in the Department of Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and then served on the history faculty at the University of Cambridge until 1978. He was professor of history at Royal Holloway College at the University of London from 1978 to 1994, when he returned to Cambridge as a member of the faculties of history and divinity. Riley-Smith, a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, is a Knight of Grace and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a Knight of Justice of The Most Venerable Order of St. John.

This event is supported by the Friends of the Hall Center and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Hall Center at hallcenter@ku.edu or call (785) 864-4798.

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