Degrees: PHD, 1996, Harvard Univ; BA, 1988, Univ Cambridge

Bio:

Simon Doubleday received his B.A. in History (First Class Hons.) from Cambridge University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1996. His principal area of research is medieval Spanish history; he is executive editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal to be published by Taylor and Francis.

Prof. Doubleday is author of The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain (Harvard University Press, 2001), for which he was awarded the university's Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement, and which appeared in a revised Spanish translation, Los Lara: Nobleza y monarquía en la España Medieval (Madrid, 2004). He has also edited two volumes of essays: Border Interrogations: Questioning the Spanish Frontiers, ed. with Benita Sampedro (Berghahn Books, 2008), and In the Light of Medieval Spain. Islam, the West, and the Relevance of History, ed. with David Coleman (Palgrave, 2008). He contributed the entry for "Castile" in the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Robert Bjork (Oxford University Press, 2008). His current research focuses on the thirteenth-century Castilian courtesan, María Pérez la Balteira, and on theoretical questions concerning ethical and political engagement in historical writing.

Since arriving at Hofstra in 1998, Prof. Doubleday has taught most summers in the study abroad program in Santiago de Compostela, curated an exhibition entitled Thatcher, Reagan, and the Battle for Britain, and co-organised a conference on exile, border-crossing and transnationalism in the Spanish-speaking world. In addition to his scholarly work, he has contributed to the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. He was also a founding member of the Hofstra-based group Long Island Teachers for Human Rights (LITHR).

Prof. Doubleday has been an invited speaker at the Université de Poitiers, the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid), Cornell University, Columbia University, and Williams College. He has organised panels at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo (Michigan), the American Historical Association, the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, and the Latin American Studies Association. He is also the book review editor of the American Association of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS).