Dr. Keith Ruiter
Dr Keith Ruiter is an interdisciplinary medievalist working at the intersection of history, law, archaeology, and literature, especially on topics like legalism, normativity, punishment, and personhood in Viking-Age Scandinavia and its diaspora. He has a passion for using innovative and culturally comparative methodologies for researching and teaching the medieval world – including Indigenous Studies, Posthumanist, and Game Studies approaches – with an eye towards fostering richer and more inclusive dialogue about this period and its many connections. Before coming to Suffolk, he held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Université de Montréal working in the Laboratory for Public Archaeology on his ongoing monograph project which brings Indigenous legal knowledge to the study of early Scandinavian law. This project has also been supported by a Wallace Johnson Fellowship for First Book Authors from the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University. He has previously worked as Assistant Professor of Viking and Early English Studies at the University of Nottingham (where he remains Honorary Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age) and Visiting Lecturer at Bishop’s University in Canada. He holds degrees from the University of Alberta (BA, double major in English and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures), the University of York (MA with distinction in Medieval Studies), and the University of Aberdeen (PhD in Scandinavian Studies) and was an invited guest researcher at Uppsala University (History) and Stockholm University (Archaeology) in Sweden.