About
Mike Bintley is Associate Professor in Medieval English Literature.
Research
Research groups
Current research
Mike’s research is transdisciplinary, focusing on the intersections of textual and material culture in relation to landscapes and environment, trees and plant-life, buildings and settlements, and minds and matter. He edits the book series ‘Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages’ for Boydell and Brewer, and the journal Medieval Ecocriticisms.
Mike is author of Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England (Boydell, 2015); Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture (Brepols, 2020) which won the English Association's Beatrice White prize; and co-author of Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2023) with Dr Kate Franklin.
With Professor Richard North he edited and translated Andreas: An Edition (Liverpool University Press, 2016), and has co-edited a number of essay collections, including Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World (OUP, 2013); Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia (Boydell, 2015); Sensory Perception in the Medieval West (Brepols, 2016); Stasis in the Medieval West?: Questioning Change and Continuity (Palgrave, 2017); Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes (Boydell, 2019); Transitions and Relationships Over Land and Sea in the Early Middle Ages of Northern Europe (Isle Heritage, 2023); Trees as Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages: Comparative Contexts (Boydell 2024); ‘Plant Temporalities’ special issue of Medieval Ecocriticisms (2025).
Mike’s current projects include An Anthology of Trees and Plant Life in the Earliest English Poetry: Treow Forms (for Liverpool University Press); and Encounters: The Medieval Natural World in 50 Objects (for Routledge), with Dr Kate Franklin. He is also writing a creative nonfiction book about the landscapes and environments of early medieval England, entitled Eorð.
Publications
Biography
Mike studied a BA in English Literature at UCL, specialising in Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Modern and Contemporary literature. He then took an MA in Medieval Literature (again, at UCL), where he also studied early medieval archaeology. His PhD (still at UCL), was supervised between the department of English Language and Literature and the Institute of Archaeology. After finishing his PhD, Mike held fixed-term posts at UCL, Oxford, and Birkbeck, before joining Canterbury Christ Church University (2012-18) and then Birkbeck (2018-23). He joined Southampton in 2023.
His affiliations include Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland, Medieval Ecocriticisms, the Viking Society for Northern Research, the Disinventing Old English group, the Colloquium for Early Medieval Studies, the Society for Medieval Archaeology, the Early Medieval Interdisciplinary Conference Series, and Clapton Community Football Club.