Jinty Nelson was a leading scholar of early medieval European history, with a special focus on Francia in the late 8th and 9th centuries. She was at the forefront of a generation that re-vivified the study of the early middle ages, in her case especially concerned with the working of the Carolingian political system and the re-evaluation of the role of the aristocracy alongside king and church in early medieval politics. She was a pioneer of the study of women’s and gender history, demonstrating not only its intrinsic interest and importance, but also that political history could not be understood without attention to both. She had a deep and humane interest in the people of the past. Her academic career was spent entirely at King’s College, London, where she was an outstanding and much-loved teacher. Her professional contribution and recognition went far beyond that, and were marked by her election in 2000 as the first woman President of the Royal Historical Society. She became a champion of the subject and its teaching, wherever that was practised. In 2006 she was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to History.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 23