Dear AARHMS members,
After three memorable years of serving as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, I am stepping down effective May 31. I will continue to serve on the Executive Council in the role of Past President until 2024.
I am delighted to announce that Dr. Thomas Barton (University of San Diego) has been elected President of AARHMS for the three-year term, 2021-2024.
As AARHMS members know well, Prof. Barton is a highly accomplished scholar whose research focuses on the relationship between different ethno-religious communities within Iberia and the Western Mediterranean during the medieval period. His first book, Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon (Penn State, 2015), explores how different non-royal Christian authorities sought to challenge the crown's claim that Jews (and Muslims) were its exclusive regalian preserve. It won two prestigious book awards: the 2017 Jordan Schnitzer Award from the Association for Jewish Studies, and the 2016 Best First Book Award from the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. His second book, Victory’s Shadow: Conquest and Governance in Medieval (Cornell University Press, 2019), which examines Christian-Muslim interaction along the lower Ebro River valley between the eleventh and later thirteenth centuries, also won a major book award: the 2020 Premio del Rey Prize from the American Historical Association. Dr. Barton edited three volumes of collected essays: Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honour of Paul Freedman (2017), Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the Larger World in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (special volume of Pedralbes published by the Universitat de Barcelona, 2020) and Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000-1700 (forthcoming from Brepols Press).
I would like to congratulate both Dr. Barton and Dr. Miguel Gomez (University of Dayton), who has been re-elected as Secretary-Treasurer of AARHMS, as well as to thank all the members of the Executive Council for their dedication and service.
As always, we welcome your ideas and initiatives, and hope that you will continue supporting AARHMS as it enters a new chapter in its history.
Maya Soifer Irish
