Dr. Roger Martínez-Dávila is a specialist in medieval and Renaissance Europe who has dedicated his life to better understanding intercultural and interreligious relations. In particular, he tracks the lives of religious and cultural minorities in Iberia – such as Sephardic Jews and Muslims or resilient communities like the Basque. 

Roger has visited every province of Spain over his 20-year career, and his travel and life abroad reflect his global perspective of the Middle Ages, drawing together the mixed Mediterranean and Gothic cultures of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and North Africa, as well as the Frankish and Germanic peoples of France and the Low Countries. He is also researching how Scandinavia, the Islamic Levant, and Arabia contributed to Europe’s medieval civilization.

Presently a professor of history at the University of Colorado and previously a Marie Curie Fellow at the Universidad de Carlos III de Madrid, Roger is an authority on medieval manuscripts and material culture. He relishes the opportunity to share his stories of investigating special Papal collections at the Vatican’s Secret Archive and Inquisition cases in the archives of Madrid and Lisbon.

Roger holds a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s in public policy from the University of California - Berkeley. He is the author of Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain as well as Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities, based on an exhibition he helped curate for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe.