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Marie Kelleher passes away

Marie Kelleher, a medieval historian who researched Spain and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages, has passed away after a short illness. She was 53 years old.

Since 2003, Professor Kelleher has taught at California State University Long Beach, where her work focused on women, gender and the law, particularly in medieval Catalonia. Her first book, The Measure of Woman: Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon, published in 2010, won the American Historical Association’s 2012 Premio del Rey prize. A second book, The Hungry City:
A Year in the Life of Medieval Barcelona, is due to be published next year.

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Tributes to Marie have come from many places. The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain issued a statement: “Marie’s indefatigable spirit, boundless energy, and willingness to give and collaborate were legendary among friends and colleagues throughout the Anglo-American world as well as within her adoptive home of Barcelona and Catalonia where she spent most every summer exploring archives, taking pictures, savoring good coffee and vegetarian eateries, practicing Catalan, relaxing in the company of friends, and loving life in general…

“Her death leaves a huge void in the field and a tremendous sense of emptiness and sadness among those who knew, admired her, and were inspired by her pathbreaking research and teaching. We will deeply miss her laughs, quirkiness, unstoppable curiosity, and compassion.”

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David Shafer, her colleague at California State University Long Beach, wrote “she embodied the qualities to which we all aspire: intelligence, insight, dedication, positivity but, above all else, kindness.”

There is a call for donations to endow a Research Award in Honor of Marie Kelleher. Click here to support it.

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