Tim Reuter’s Legacy Remembered
Timothy Reuter’s life, contribution to scholarship, and the posthumous publication of his last work were celebrated on 5 June with annual Reuter lecture and Masterclass at Southampton.
Tim Reuter was Professor of Medieval History at Southampton from 1994 until his death in 2002. During his scholarly career, Tim forged connections between medieval studies in England and continental Europe, encouraged interdisciplinary medieval teaching, pioneered new editorial methods, and wrote and edited ground-breaking volumes and articles in his broad field. This year’s Reuter Lecture marked the completion of his final work, an edited collection of the letters of Wibald, twelfth-century Abbot of Stavelot and Corvey. A copy of the three-volume Das Briefbuch Abt Wibalds von Stablo und Corvey, brought to completion in 2012 by his colleague Prof. Dr Martina Hartmann at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, where he worked before coming to Southampton, was presented to the Hartley Library by Tim’s widow, Georgina.
This year’s Reuter Lecturer, Barbara Yorke (Professor Emerita, University of Winchester, examined some of the ways in which King Alfred’s story has been and can be told through objects and places associated with him in ‘“No History, Only Biography”: Recreating the Past through Biographies of People, Places, and Things’. The day of events also included the Reuter Masterclass, which showcased the research of eight promising post-graduate and early career researchers on approaches to the biography of medieval and renaissance subjects.