Speaker Biographies

Anthony Adams is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Brown University. He is the author of several articles on medieval literature; he has a special interest in the way medieval writers handled violence and trauma, and is currently preparing a book on the subject.

Anthea Boylston is a researcher and lecturer in biological anthropology at the University of Bradford (UK). She has worked on British archaeological projects from many periods, and was involved in the excavation and analysis of a mass grave from the bloodiest battle on English soil (Towton, 1461).  She collaborated on a book and BBC television program on the project, called Blood Red Roses (2000), and has written numerous articles and archaeological reports.

Kelly DeVries is an internationally-recognized medieval military historian and professor at Loyola University-Maryland. Together with Cliff Rogers, he has done a great deal to convince the military history discipline to accept the medieval period as a valid area of study.  He has appeared on numerous television programs for the History Channel, PBS, and National Geographic, among others. He is the author of many books and articles, including Medieval Military Technology (1992; 2nd ed. forthcoming 2011), Joan of Arc: a Military Leader (1999), and many more.

John France is the world's foremost historian of the military aspect of the crusades. He was a professor at the University of Wales-Swansea (UK) until his retirement in 2007; he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies for five years. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade (1994), and Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-1300 (1999). He has appeared in numerous television programs for the BBC, the History Channel, and other media.

Christine Lee is a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China. She specializes in the archaeology and paleopathology of East Asia. She has been named one of fourteen worldwide "National Geographic Emerging Explorers" for 2010, and is the author of several articles in her specialty.

John Lennox is an internationally respected expert on historical combat, whose work has been seen in numerous film and stage productions. He is a member of Art of Combat (www.artofcombat.org), a fight direction company which provides combat direction to producers of movies and plays.  He currently teaches at several Michigan universities and colleges.

Piers Mitchell is a lecturer in paleopathology at Cambridge University (UK), a practicing orthopedic surgeon, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He is the foremost expert on medical practice in the crusades and crusader states, and is the author of numerous articles and chapters on the subject, as well as Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon (2004). He has written extensively on the leprosy which afflicted King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, and assisted in the preparation of a number of American, Australian and British television and radio programs.

Cliff Rogers is an internationally-recognized medieval military historian and a professor at the US Military Academy at West Point. Together with Kelly DeVries, he has done a great deal to convince the military history discipline to accept the medieval period as a valid area of study. He is the author of many articles and several books on his subject, including Soldiers' Lives through History: the Middle Ages (2007); he also edited the acclaimed three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology (2010).