Media & Reviews
Interviews & Public Outreach
Interview — Gone Medieval
In this October 2023 episode of HistoryHit's popular podcast Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega meets award-winning historian Dr. Verena Krebs, who challenges the conventional narratives of African-European relations, arguing that African exploration of Europe was driven by aesthetic curiosity rather than military ventures.
Interview — Recollect Podcast
RECOLLECT host B. Francis Clark and Verena Krebs discuss her motivation for writing the book, how the book challenges longstanding assumptions about African agency, her thoughts on the current political and humanitarian challenges facing Ethiopia today (conversation first taped in October 2021, broadcast in late 2022).
Verena Krebs erhält den Dan David Prize
Prof. Dr. Verena Krebs vom Historischen Institut der RUB gehört zu den diesjährigen Preisträgerinnen und Preisträgern des renommierten Dan-David-Preises. Die Preisjury belohnt damit ihre „brillante Analyse westlicher und äthiopischer Quellen, die einen frischen und spannenden Blick auf den kulturellen Austausch zwischen Europa und Afrika ermöglicht", wie es in der Begründung heißt.
Read full press release here (in German).
Verena Krebs wins world's largest history award
"Verena Krebs is selected as a winner of the 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest history award in the world, for her research on the late medieval Solomonic kingdom of Ethiopia that carefully dismantles long-long held scholarly narratives based on colonialistic attitudes, offering a new view on the history of Late Medieval Ethiopia and Europe".
Read full press release here.
Review in New York Review of Books
»Recent studies of medieval Ethiopia are a timely reminder of a Christianity wider than Europe«
by Peter Brown
"It was with a sense of standing on the top of the world that the kings of Ethiopia reached out to Western Europe at the turn of the fifteenth century.
These encounters are the subject of a brilliant book by Verena Krebs,
Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe."
Read full review here.
Interview in Spiegel Geschichte (4/2021)
»Die Äthiopier behandelten Europa als exotischen Souvenirladen«
"Im späten Mittelalter reisten äthiopische Gesandte nach Venedig, Rom und an den Bodensee. Verena Krebs beschreibt, auf welchen Wegen die Afrikaner nach Europa kamen, was sie suchten und wie selbstbewusst sie auftraten."
Read PDF of full interview here (in German) or download a PDF here.
Article in Smithsonian Magazine
"A New History Changes the Balance of Power Between Ethiopia and Medieval Europe"
Verena Krebs talked to David Perry & Matt Gabriele for @SmithsonianMag
about her book, why she deleted a manuscript of 85k words & wrote 115k new (and, in her opinion, better) ones — after struggling to tell the story as she thought it should be told for years. Read full article here.
Interview — BBC HistoryExtra
In HistoryExtra's Podcast episode "Medieval Ethiopia’s diplomatic missions", Verena Krebs reveals what diplomatic embassies sent by the Christian leaders of Ethiopia can tell us about the kingdom’s place in the medieval world. Hour-long interview with BBC History's content director David Musgrove.
Listen here, here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview — The Medieval Podcast
Danièle Cybulskie of The Medieval Podcast and Medievalists.net speaks with Verena Krebs about contact between Solomonic Ethiopia and Western Europe, how historians have misconstrued Ethiopian interests in the past, and what we can learn when we dig into primary sources.
45-minute interview, available here, here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Content from Youtube can't be displayed due to your current cookie settings. To show this content, please click "Consent & Show" to confirm that necessary data will be transferred to Youtube to enable this service. Further information can be found in our Privacy Policy. Changed your mind? You can revoke your consent at any time via your cookie settings.
Ethiopian Medieval Diplomacy & Kingship
Talk given as part of the Ethiopian Studies Series at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, convened by Suzanne Akbari (IAS), Aaron Butts (CUA/IAS), Samantha L. Kelly (Rutgers U/IAS), Sabine Schmidtke (IAS). March 2021.
Content from Youtube can't be displayed due to your current cookie settings. To show this content, please click "Consent & Show" to confirm that necessary data will be transferred to Youtube to enable this service. Further information can be found in our Privacy Policy. Changed your mind? You can revoke your consent at any time via your cookie settings.
Subsequent Q&A Session on "Ethiopian Studies — Medieval Studies" with Alessandro Bausi (Universität Hamburg) & Eyob Derillo (The British Library). March 2021.
Swiss National Radio Interview (German):
Unser Blick auf Afrika ist lückenhaft
Interview on aspects of medieval African history as part of the series "Die Herren des Wissens — Wissen und Macht in Zeiten des Umbruchs", series produced by Katharina Bochsler for Radio SRF 2 Kultur. February 2020.