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Thursday, 29 April 2010

An honours graduate from The University of Western Australia has won prestigious recognition - the 2010 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (RNAAS) Heineken Prize for History, awarded in Amsterdam to five internationally acclaimed scientists and scholars.

Professor Rosamond McKitterick (née Pierce), now Chair in Medieval History at the University of Cambridge, was lauded for her research that has fundamentally changed how we view Medieval Western Europe.  Her work has focused on the Carolingian period and the reign of Charlemagne, King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800.

Historians had long assumed that most Europeans at the time were illiterate and that ideas were transmitted orally, but Professor McKitterick's initially controversial work upends this idea and shows the period to be so dynamic that it laid the foundations of today's governmental and administrative institutions and culture.

By meticulously analysing original manuscripts, she has presented plausible evidence that literacy not only flourished during Carolingian times but infiltrated far down the social pyramid: princes issued written orders, noblemen gifted libraries to monasteries, many children went to school, and former slaves were given a written document as evidence that they were freemen.

Professor McKitterick has also re-examined Charlemagne with a fresh look at the manuscripts written during and soon after his 46-year rule.

She has an impressive list of publications to her name, including major books on the early Middle Ages and the Carolingian period, and her methods have given rise to a ‘McKitterick school' in historical research that emulates her bold approach.

Her US $150,000 prize will be presented in September during an extraordinary meeting of the RNAAS.

As Rosamond Pierce, she was Secretary of UWA's Guild of Undergraduates when Kim Beazley, now Australia's Ambassador to the United States, was President.

Media references

Professor Rosamond McKitterick
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716

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