Clare Downham


Clare Downham is an English academic, a medievalist and historian of Ireland and Britain and the Vikings, specialising in the era 400 to 1350.

Career

She studied for degrees in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews and in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, completing a PhD at the latter in 2003 under the supervision of Prof. Fergus Kelly.
In 2001, she took up a John O'Donovan scholarship in Celtic Studies from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, before taking a lectureship in the Celtic department at the University of Aberdeen and then in Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. Subsequently, at Liverpool, she became Professor of Medieval History with the Institute of Irish Studies.
Downham was a elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in May 2025.

Select publications