Dr Matthew Firth

Matthew is Research Fellow in Medieval History, supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award: 'Contesting Conquest: Pre-Modern Attempts to come to Terms with the Past' (DE250100116). Matthew is also a Humfrey Wanley Visiting Fellow at the Bodeleian Libraries, University of Oxford (2026-2027). He has held previous fellowships from the Australian Academy of the Humanities (2024), the Australian Historical Association (2024) and the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2023).

Matthew's research focuses on historiography, biography, cultural memory, and the transmission of historical narrative across time and place, with particular specialisms in the history of early medieval England and Icelandic saga literature. His research includes a major study of Gunnhild, the tenth-century queen consort of Norway and Northumbria. His forthcoming monograph, Gunnhildr, Mother of Kings, in Scandinavian Cultural Memory, is the first-ever full-length biography of the queen and will be published open access by Arc Humanities Press in February 2027.

Matthew's first monograph, Early English Queens, 850–1000: Potestas Reginae (Routledge, 2024), is a biographical study of English royal women in the years 850-1000 that explores the development of queenship at a critical juncture in the history of early medieval England. His second monograph, Remembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders (Routledge, 2025), examines depictions of Viking Age England in the Sagas of Icelanders and their utility as historical sources. Matthew's edited collection, Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past (York Medieval Press, 2025), brings together a collection of essays from notable scholars at various career stages who examine the reception of England's pre-Conquest past in the histories of later medieval commentators.

Matthew is President of the Australian Early Medieval Association and assistant editor of the Brepols series East Central Europe, 476–1795.

Most recent articles:

Matthew Firth, 'Víking Across Conversion: Depictions of Víkingar in the Sagas of Icelanders', Journal of Medieval History 43.1 (2025).

Matthew Firth, 'Æthelflæd and the Lacunae in Cotton Charter VIII.27 (S221)', Notes and Queries 72.2 (2025)

Matthew Firth, ‘"Cesare splendidior:" Anglo-Norman Memories of Æthelflæd of Mercia', in Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past, ed. Matthew Firth (York Medieval Press, 2025), 192–211.

Matthew Firth, 'What's in a Name? Tracing the Origins of Alfred's "the Great"', The English Historical Review 139 (2024), 1–32).

• Cultural Memory & Exchange

• Early Medieval England (Anglo-Saxons)

• Early Medieval Monarchy

• Early Medieval Norway

• Erik Bloodaxe

• Gunnhild, Mother of Kings

• Icelandic Sagas

• Medieval Iceland

• Medieval Literature

• Medieval Scandinavia

• The Middle Ages

• Queenship

• Vikings and Viking Age History