Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia . Spain

Faculty Member, Historia Medieval y Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas

Profesor asociado

About

Well... I got my PhD in Medieval History at the University of Salamanca (Spain). The title of my thesis was "Idea and Reality of Crusade in the times of Alfonso X (1240-1284)" .
Nonetheless my interest in Crusade history  sprang from my two years degree and postgraduate studies in the University of Edinburgh, where I attended the courses run by Gary Dickson, Angus Mackay, T. Goodman and M. Angold.

The focus of my PhD was to look at the international relationships that the crusade experience created from and around the Iberian Peninsula in the 13th century. This international focus is something important to me, as one my basic threads is the comparation of situations, ideology and crusade events in three main theatres: the Baltic, the Iberian Peninsula and the Holy Land.

Althought I finished my history degree in 1992 I have only recently started to work in academia, having been an archaeologist, an editor, a webmaster and a guide for monuments. Meanwhile I continued researching and publishing in scientific journals, books and conferences as an independent scholar.

I think that I have always been interested in the military and the military history. In fact, I was an officer (second lieutenant) in the Spanish army (until two years ago in the reserve). Although I am an infantry man, I ended up commanding a tank platoon for six months in 1993.

Another area of interest is the use of new technologies for the research and teaching of Medieval History. In May 1998 I created, uploaded and maintained one of the first webpages in Spanish dedicated to Medieval History: TEMPLE (http://usuarios.multimania.es/historiador1969/). Nowadays, we are working on a full update of that page.

I am now a part-time lecturer of Medieval History at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (like the Open University in England, more or less). I am still struggling my way up in the academic world so any job offers are welcome.


Apart from a book based on my thesis, I am also working on two other projects that have to do with my other two main areas of interest: the military orders (i.e Teutonic Order) and the Medieval military history.

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