Alexander D'Alisera

Visiting Assistant Professor

Photo of Alexander D'Alisera

Alexander D'Alisera

Ph.D.

Contact

Stokes Hall S348

Telephone: 617-552-8542

Email: dalisera@bc.edu

ORCID

Education

  • Ph.D. (History), Boston College
  • Cert. (Digital Humanities), Boston College
  • M.A. (Religion), Yale University
  • B.A. (History & Classics), Bard College

Courses

Modern History I and II

Research Interests

caves and stone in premodern Britain; early medieval ritual and religion; Old English literature; Pictish stones; North Sea environmental history; the history of the museum; digital humanities

Advisor

Robin Fleming

Department

History

Biography

Alexander D鈥橝lisera is an interdisciplinary historian of premodern Europe, specializing in caves, stone, ritual, and religion across the medieval North Sea world. As a Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College, he teaches courses in the global history core from the perspective of environmental studies, eco-criticism, and the history of religion. From 2024 to 2025, he held the Charles W. Maus Graduate Research Fellowship in Karst Studies at the Cave Conservancy Foundation.

Dr. D鈥橝lisera鈥檚 book project, Medieval Cave People: A North Sea Speleology, c. 400-1200, unearths the history of ordinary people in extraordinary underground environments across the premodern North Sea region. Deploying archaeological and literary sources together with ecocriticism and landscape phenomenology, the book contextualizes local and regional human-cave entanglements within the broader environmental and religious histories of medieval Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Iceland.

Dr. D鈥橝lisera鈥檚 scholarship has also appeared in postmedieval, the Eerdmans New Testament Apocrypha book series, and Foillseachaidhean Rannsachaidh Oilthigh Ghlaschu (the University of Glasgow Research Publications), among other venues. With colleagues in the United Kingdom, he is currently co-editing an international volume on premodern stone, provisionally titled Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Stone and Society from Prehistory to the Middle Ages.

Prior to his current appointment, Dr. D鈥橝lisera earned his Ph.D. in history from Boston College, having worked under the supervision of Professor Robin Fleming. He also holds an M.A. in religion from Yale University, where he was a Marquand Scholar at the Divinity School, as well as a B.A. in history and classical studies from Bard College.

Selected Grants and Prizes
  • 2024-25 Charles W. Maus Graduate Research Fellowship in Karst Studies (Cave Conservancy Foundation, 2024).
  • CARA Summer Scholarship, to study digital palaeography at the University of G枚ttingen (Medieval Academy of America, 2022).
  • Mary Cady Tew Prize, for exceptional ability in philosophy, literature, ethics or history (Yale University, 2016).
  • President Leon Botstein Prize, for intellectual ambition, creativity, and integrity (Bard College, 2015).
  • Cristina Duarte Prize, for research in medieval literature (Bard College, 2015).
  • Book Award, for excellence in Latin (Bard College, 2012).

Publications

鈥淭eaching the Climate Catastrophe with an Early Medieval Poem,鈥� in A Historian鈥檚 Handbook for Saving the World: Responding to the Global Climate Emergency, ed. Alexandra Hui and Emily Pawley (MIT Press, forthcoming).

鈥淒urrow鈥檚 Lion: Irenaeus, Pictish Stonescapes, and the Book of Durrow鈥檚 Non-Hieronymian Evangelical Symbols,鈥� in聽脤 Chaluim Chille: Interdisciplinary Studies on Iona and Columba on the 1500th Anniversary of the Birth of the Saint, ed. Sofia Evemalm-Graham, with Thomas Owen Clancy, Katherine Forsyth, and Gilbert M谩rkus, Foillseachaidhean Rannsachaidh Oilthigh Ghlaschu 1 (Cl貌 G脿idhlig Oilthigh Ghlaschu, 2025), 208-233.

鈥淪peluncar Slumber and the Medieval Time Traveler: Unearthing the Imagined Cave of the Old English Seven Sleepers,鈥� postmedieval 15, no. 4 (2024), 969-989.

鈥�The Dream of the Rood: A New Translation and Introduction,鈥� in聽New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 3, ed. Tony Burke (Eerdmans, 2023), 110-129 (with Samuel Osborn).

Review of David Ceri Jones et al., A History of Christianity in Wales (University of Wales, 2022), in Reading Religion 8, no. 9 (American Academy of Religion, 2023).

Translation of聽Beowulf, lines 151-165, in聽Beowulf by All, ed. Jean Abbott, Elaine Treharne, and Mateusz Fafinski (Arc Humanities, 2021).

Review of Jordan Zweck,聽Epistolary Acts: Anglo-Saxon Letters and Early English Media聽(University of Toronto, 2018), in聽Reading Religion聽5, no. 7 (American Academy of Religion, 2020).

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