Jonathan Shepard is a British historian specialising in early medieval Russia, the Caucasus, and the Byzantine Empire. He is regarded as a leading authority in Byzantine studies and on the Kievan Rus.[2] He specialises in diplomatic and archaeological history of the early Kievan period.[3] Shepard received his doctorate in 1973 from Oxford University and was a lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge. Among other works, he is co-author (with Simon Franklin) of The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (1996), and editor of The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008).
Jonathan Shepard | |
---|---|
Born | 1948 |
Academic background | |
Education | New College, Oxford |
Thesis | Byzantium and Russia in the Eleventh Century: A Study in Political and Ecclesiastical Relations (1974[1]) |
Doctoral advisor | Dimitri Obolensky |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Cambridge |
Notable students | Peter Frankopan |
Notable works | The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (with Simon Franklin) |
Among Shepard's theories is that the breakdown in Byzantine-Khazar relations and the shift in Byzantine foreign policy towards allying with the Pechenegs and the Rus against Khazaria was a result of the Khazar conversion to Judaism.