Dr. Rodrigo Garcia Velasco

Biography

Rodrigo Garcia-Velasco specializes in the history of medieval Iberia, focusing on economic and legal interactions among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in regions that comprise modern Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. At University College London, he is conducting a project entitled Documentary Afterlives: Recycling Past Premodern Iberian Judiciaries, 1371-1600. This project considers the marginalized groups such as Jews, women, and peasants who chose to preserve legal documents in Castile during the Central Middle Ages, and how these documents were used in interactions with central institutions of the monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Rodrigo is working towards the completion of a book titled Jews, Muslims, Law in Christian Iberia, 1000-1200, which studies how legal classifications of Jewish and Muslim differences emerged within municipal franchises and town laws known as fueros and cartas de población. His wider research interests include the legal, theological, and literary treatment of religious minorities in medieval Europe, transfers of Arabic and Latin literary traditions, and the emergence of pre-modern tolerance theories (convivencia) in nineteenth-century Spanish historiography.

Research Interests

Experience