Debby Banham

Debby Banham is a British historian of early medieval England, specialising in food production, diet, and medicine. She has published on Anglo-Saxon farming and food and drink, as well as on medieval sign language.

Biography After having worked as an agricultural labourer, Banham received a Diploma in Advanced Education from the University of Nottingham and her PhD from Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1987, she and Jane Renfrew instigated the creation of an Anglo-Saxon Herb Garden at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Until 2018, she taught palaeography, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon history at Birkbeck College, London. She has also been a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.

She returned to Newnham College in 2007 as Special Supervisor in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

She has been a research associate at the Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine and the Thorndike and Kibre project, and worked with Martha Bayless on the Early English Bread Project. and a festschrift, Cultivating the Earth, Nurturing the Body and Soul: Daily Life in Early Medieval England (2025).

Select publications