Dr Richard Allen

Role in College

Richard manages the college’s rich archives collections, not only cataloguing them, but also answering enquiries about them, from both inside and outside Magdalen, and promoting them more widely. He also oversees the arrival of new accessions to the archives, be it transfers from offices within the college, or gifts from former members and others. He heads the Archives staff within the Library and Archives team, overseeing the work of the Assistant Archivist and the Wilson Project Archivist.

Background

Prior to arriving at Magdalen, Richard was Archivist and Research Fellow at St Peter’s College, Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow in Medieval History at St John’s College, Oxford. He has also held positions (both academic and otherwise) at the Université de Caen and the U.S. House of Representatives. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Glasgow and a PGDip in Archives and Records Management from University College London.

Richard is an Associate Member of the History Faculty, and continues to present and publish regularly on his chosen specialism, the ecclesiastical history of northern France (in particular Normandy) in the High Middle Ages. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Richard also serves as a Trustee of the Oxford Historical Society and of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature.

Research interests

Richard’s research concerns the ecclesiastical history of northern France in the High Middle Ages, with a particular focus on ducal Normandy (911–1204). He works primarily with charters and other such administrative records, and is particularly interested in what this material can reveal about the political, legal, economic and cultural circumstances of the societies in which it was produced. He has also published widely on topics ranging from ecclesiastical rivalry, through excommunication, the nature of episcopal power, the Cistercian abbey of Savigny, and the role of relics in the Middle Ages.

Recent publications

• ‘Qui scripsit hanc cartam: charters and their scribes through the archives of Magdalen College, Oxford (c.1100–c.1300)’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 47 (forthcoming, 2025)
• ‘Mills, manuscripts, and monastic archives: the Phillipps charters of Mont Saint-Michel’, The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 100:1 (2024), pp. 1-37 (w/ B. Pohl)
• ‘La production diplomatique des évêques de Bayeux et de Coutances (XIe-XIIIe siècles)’, in Écrire à l’ombre des cathédrales. Pratiques de l’écrit en milieu cathédral (espace anglo-normand et France de l’Ouest (XIe-XIIIe siècle) (Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 8-12 juin 2016), ed. G. Combalbert and C. Senséby (Rennes, 2024), pp. 25-41
• ‘Les sceaux du chartrier de l’abbaye de Savigny de 1112 à 1300’, in Apposer sa marque: le sceau et son usage (autour de l’espace anglo-normand) (Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 4-8 juin 2013), ed. C. Blanc-Riehl, J.-L. Chassel, and C. Maneuvrier (Paris, 2023), pp. 51-74
• ‘The chapel of St Catherine at the Cistercian abbey of Savigny: “unearthing” an architectural enigma’, The Antiquaries Journal, 103 (2023), pp. 215-239
• ‘Les bibliothèques du Mont Saint-Michel et de Savigny (Manche) et la tradition annalistique normande: une approche comparative’, Tabularia « Études », « Autour de la Bibliothèque virtuelle du Mont Saint-Michel » (2022), pp. 1-20
• ‘Church and Society’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of William the Conqueror, ed. B. Pohl (Cambridge, 2022), pp. 98-117
• ‘Écrire l’histoire dans la Normandie cistercienne (XIIe-XIIIe siècle): un premier aperçu’, in Maîtriser le temps et façonner l’histoire. Les historiens normands au Moyen Âge (Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 25-29 septembre 2019), ed. F. Paquet (Caen, 2022), pp. 307-337