Bauer's History

 I started teaching medieval history in 2019. Whilst I have an overall interest in general history, this period was quite new to me and I have since tried to refresh and renew my knowledge on it. Being a historian of the 20th and the 19th centuries social policies, it was quite a leap to teach on crusades and lived religion in 12th century Europe.  As I progress as a teacher, I always find certain aspects of a time period or a social phenomena as more interesting than others. For the past years, this have led to an increased interest in the ”Islamic period” with the height of the caliphate and the moor presence on the Iberian peninsula between 900-1400. I have also come to think a lot of why this period is of particular interest. One aspect is that this was not taught in schools when I was in highschool. It was first at the university I encountered the Islamic period and first as a teacher I seriously engaged with it. The reason for this is quite simple, what is taught in scho...

 I have a doctorate in the humanities from a Swedish university. My PhD thesis was therefore a monographs that did not go through the peer review process, other than the thesis defence which in itself can be viewed as a peer-review process on crack. After finishing my PhD I, however, started to try to publish in international journals.  This process have been both exhausting, frustrating and challenging my ideas of writing. It has also helped me to evolve as a researcher in ways I did not think possible some years ago. Whilst I only have only published paper, I have several underway after several attempts to write peer-review which I totally lacked experience of. The first thing that I have come to notice is that it often takes a long time to publish peer review. Periods for upto a year is not unheard of, nor particularly long. This aspect actually came as a surprise for me. A second aspect is also that journals differs in styles and what they expect from a paper. The old ”the...