Dr James Kane

Born and raised in the Hunter Valley of NSW, James completed his bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Sydney before moving to Cambridge to undertake a PhD. His thesis explored how the cloth crosses that crusaders stitched onto their clothing transformed the ideology and vocabulary of crusading in different regions and languages between c. 1095 and c. 1250.

After completing his doctoral research, James returned to Australia and taught Latin, Old Norse-Icelandic, and Old and Middle English language and literature at the University of Sydney until the end of 2019. He moved to Adelaide in January 2020 to take up a lectureship in Medieval History at Flinders University, where he teaches widely across the history of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, with a particular focus on the history of the crusades and medieval religion.

James is currently working on a number of book projects, including a monograph with the provisional title The Crusading Cross: Ideology and Practice, c. 1095–c. 1300.