UCLA professor Jamie Kreiner, who holds the Wellman Chair in medieval history, is being honored with the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Medal.
Kreiner is being recognized for her contributions to history at the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The medal comes with an endowment of 80,000 euros.
Kreiner specializes in the cultural, social and intellectual history of the early Middle Ages. Her important works include “The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom” (2014, Cambridge University Press), “Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West” (2020, Yale University Press), and “The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction” (2023, Liveright/Norton). Her current research explores the interface between cognitive science and history and the ways that early medieval cognitive tools, habits and ethics can change our understanding of the present.
The Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation present the honors each year. The endowments are funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).
Kreiner joins two other academics being honored this Dec. 2 at the award ceremony in Germany: Surabhi Ranganathan, a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge, and Prerna Singh, an associate professor of political science and international and public affairs, as well as an associate professor of behavioral and social sciences from Brown University.
