Dr. Rowan Dorin

Biography

Rowan Dorin is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, specializing in the history of Western Europe during the high and late Middle Ages. His research focuses on the interactions between law and society, particularly how legal norms conflict with social practices. One strand of his research examines economic life and thought in medieval periods, including debates on usury and moneylending. His recent book, "No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe," published by Princeton University Press in 2023, investigates the expulsion of Jews and the role of Christian moneylenders during the Middle Ages. Dorin's ongoing project explores how medieval canon law was adapted and resisted in local contexts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He has also developed a prize-winning full-text database of late medieval local ecclesiastical legislation, known as Corpus Synodalium, since 2016. Born and raised in Western Canada, Dorin completed his undergraduate and doctoral studies at Harvard University, earning an MPhil in Medieval History from the University of Cambridge. Before joining Stanford, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Research Interests

Experience