Staff profile

Len Scales studies the political culture of late medieval Europe, particularly the German-speaking lands. His current work is concerned with ideas about ‘German’ identity between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. His recent publications in this area have concentrated upon collective stereotypes (the ‘warrior’ Germans), the relationship between peoplehood and power, and the question of medieval German ‘exceptionalism’. He is also exploring the history of medieval ideas about ethnicity and common identity more broadly, across the whole of the c.500-c.1500 period. His current and forthcoming publications in this field examine medieval ideas about the destruction of peoples. For the future, he plans a comparative investigation of political communication and ‘propaganda’ in the late Middle Ages, concentrating on the development of popular and visual media. He would welcome the opportunity to supervise postgraduate research on late medieval German history, late medieval political culture, and medieval peoplehood and inter-ethnic and inter-cultural relations.

Areas of Postgraduate Supervision

• late-medieval Germany
• late-medieval European political culture
• pre-modern European ethnicity and nationhood

• politics, society and political ideas in later medieval Germany

• Britain and Continental Europe
• Medieval
• Political Cultures
• Transnational History

• Native Realms: A New History of Europe, 1291-1420
• The Kaiser Myth: Medieval Emperors and German Memory, CE 900-2000

• Late Medieval Germany - Bibliography of works in English

• 2015: Studies in German History (German History Society / Oxford University Press): Series editor (with Professor Neil Gregor, University of Southampton)
• 2014: German History Society: Committee member

Available for media contact about:

• Europe: History & Archaeology: The history of ethnicity and nationhood in the Middle Ages
• Medieval history: The history of ethnicity and nationhood in the Middle Ages
• Politicial, cultural, social history: The history of ethnicity and nationhood in the Middle Ages
• Europe: History & Archaeology: The political and cultural history of medieval Germany and Central Europe
• Medieval history: The political and cultural history of medieval Germany and Central Europe
• Politicial, cultural, social history: The political and cultural history of medieval Germany and Central Europe

Authored book

• Scales, Len (2012). The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245-1414. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter in book

• Scales, Len (2023). The Holy Roman Empire. In The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism Volume 1: Patterns and Trajectories over the Longue Durée. Carmichael, Cathie, D'Auria, Matthew & Roshwald, Aviel Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1: 54-75.
• Scales, Len (2022). Emperors of Rome: Italy and the 'Roman-German' monarchy, 1308-1452. In Emperors and Imperial Discourse in Italy, c.1300-1500. Huijbers, Anne Rome: l'École français de Rome. 592: 11-42.
• Scales, Len (2021). The Latin West: Pluralism in the Shadow of the Past. In Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700-c.1500. Holmes, Catherine, Shepard, Jonathan, Van Steenbergen, Jo & Weiler, Björn Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 133-177.
• Scales, Len (2020). The Hohenstaufen and the shape of history. In Geschichte erzählen: Strategien der Narrativierung von Vergangenheit in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Bowden,Sarah, Eikelmann, Manfred, Mossman, Stephen & Stolz, Michael Narr Francke Attempto. 403-418.
• Scales, Len (2020). Court and control: Sigismund in England, 1416. In Hof und Kanzlei Kaiser Sigismunds als politisches Zentrum und soziales System. Bárta, Stanislav & Elbel, Petr De Gruyter.
• Scales, Len (2016). The parchment imperialists: texts, scribes, and the medieval western Empire, c.1250-c.1440. In Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: from Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. Crooks, Peter & Parsons, Timothy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 221-249.
• Scales, Len (2016). The Empire in translation: English perspectives on Imperium and Emperors, 1220-1440. In The Plantagenet Empire, 1259-1453: Proceedings of the 2014 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton Medieval Studies). Crooks, Peter, Green, David & Ormrod, W. Mark Donington: Shaun Tyas. 49-71.
• Scales, Len (2015). Purposeful pasts: Godfrey of Viterbo and later medieval imperialist thought. In Godfrey of Viterbo and his Readers: Imperial Tradition and Universal History in Late Medieval Europe. Foerster, Thomas Farnham: Ashgate. 119-144.
• Scales, L. (2010). The illuminated Reich: memory, crisis and the visibility of monarchy in late medieval Germany. In The Holy Roman Empire, Reconsidered. Jason Coy, Benjamin Marschke & David Sabean New York Oxford: Berghahn. 73-92.
• Scales, L. (2010). Central and late medieval Europe. In The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Bloxham, Donald & Moses, A. Dirk Oxford: Oxford University Press. 280-303.
• Scales, L. E. (2005). Late medieval Germany: an under-Stated nation? In Power and the Nation in European history. Len Scales & Oliver Zimmer Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 166-191.

Edited book

• Chris Given-Wilson & Ann Kettle (2008). War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150-1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich. Woodbridge: Boydell.
• Scales, L.E. & Oliver Zimmer (2005). Power and the Nation in European History. Cambridge University Press.

Journal Article

• Scales, Len (2022). Ever closer union? Unification, difference, and the 'Making of Europe', c.950-c.1350. English Historical Review 137(585): 321-361.
• Scales, Len (2019). Wenceslas looks out: monarchy, locality, and the symbolism of power in fourteenth-century Bavaria. Central European History 52(2): 179-210.
• Whaley, J. & Scales, L. (2018). Rewriting the history of the Holy Roman Empire. German History 36(3): 1-18.
• Scales, Len (2015). Before and after Nationes: accounting for medieval peoples in twenty-first-century Germany. German History 33(4): 624-645.
• Scales, Len (2012). Re-staging the Reich: the life and times of the Golden Bull (1356). Bulletin of International Medieval Research 17/18: 84-106.
• Len Scales (2009). Rose without thorn, eagle without feathers: nation and power in late medieval England and Germany. German Historical Institute London Bulletin 31(1): 3-35.
• Scales, L. E. (2007). Bread, cheese and genocide: imagining the destruction of peoples in medieval western Europe. History 92(307): 284-300.
• Scales, L. E. (2003). Germen militiae: war and German identity in the later middle ages. Past and Present 180(1): 41-82.
• Scales, L. E. (2001). Monarchy and German identity in the later Middle Ages. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 83(3): 167-200.
• Scales, L.E. (2000). Identifying 'France' and 'Germany': medieval nation-making in some recent publications. Bulletin of International Medieval Research 6: 21-46.
• Scales, L.E. (1999). At the margin of community: Germans in pre-Hussite Bohemia. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9: 327-352.
• Scales, L.E. (1998). The Cambridgeshire ragman rolls. English Historical Review 113(452): 553-579.
• Scales, L.E. (1995). France and the Empire: the viewpoint of Alexander of Roes. French History 9(4): 394-416.