Mr Freddy Potts

Supervisors: 

• Martial Staub (Primary) 
• Danica Summerlin (Secondary)

Period:

Pre-1500

Thesis abstract:

I aim to study migration into and within medieval Prussia and Livonia during their conquest and Christianisation. I am interested in conceptualising migration and the region’s emergent colonial societies as linked, evolving social phenomena. I further wish to challenge the nationalism-inflected historiographical division of Prussia and Livonia into separate research spheres, and contest the presentation of the Teutonic Order as the sole decisive agent of change in the new societies. To accomplish this I employ and adapt Nils Blomkvist’s model of the Catholic world-system and an array of textual and archaeological evidence from multiple traditions.