Professor David Abulafia FBA, Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge, will be delivering a guest lecture entitled 'How to write a history of the sea' at Warwick's Palazzo Pesaro Papafava in Venice at 6.00pm on Tuesday 20 November 2012.

Professor Abulafia has been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge since 1974; he was Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge from 2003 until 2005 and in 2008 was elected to the Council of the University. His research centres on the economic, social and political history of the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance with a particular focus on Italy and Spain; he also works on attitudes to non-Christians in Medieval Europe and the early Atlantic world.

His many publications include Frederick II: a medieval emperor, first published in 1988 and reprinted several time, which gave an entirely new perspective on this iconic medieval figure. Recent books include Italy in the central Middle Ages, 2004; The Discovery of Mankind, 2008, and The Great Sea: a human history of the Mediterranean, 2011. The latter covers the history of the Mediterranean from 22,000 BC to 2010 AD, covering the movements of peoples across the sea, their goods and ideas and the ports they created; for this book, Professor Abulafia received the Mountbatten Literary Award from the Maritime Foundation. Professor Abulafia is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the Academia Europaea.

Find out more

For more details please contact Chiara Croff, Warwick in Venice, by email or on tel. +39 041 52 03 806.