Aleksander Pluskowski

My academic life has been split between two places: Cambridge and Reading. I completed my Ph.D and two post-docs in Cambridge and from 2007 I've been a lecturer in medieval archaeology at the University of Reading. My earlier research focused on the wolf in north-western Europe on either side of the conversion to Christianity, and I'm currently preparing a new book on the topic to significantly update the original volume published back in 2006. But also expect to see more books on crusading, which is my other big research interest alongside religious conversion, biodiversity/ecology and medieval frontier societies. I'm currently directing a major EU-funded project investigating the environmental impact of the Baltic crusades in Poland, Latvia and Estonia (www.ecologyofcrusading.com). The end result of this will be two chunky academic books, and one glossy, accessible volume summarising our findings...with lots of pictures! Hopefully this will encourage more people not only to visit the Baltic region, but to appreciate how this spectacular and tragic historical period resulted in the creation of the landscapes, and some of the most striking monuments, you can see today. As a PhD student I spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, I've worked out on archaeological sites in the UK, Italy, Montenegro, Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Mauritius, and my travels have taken me to Central and North America.