10 Facts About Peter Heather

Peter Heather was born in Northern Ireland on 8 June 1960.

Peter Heather subsequently lectured at Worcester College, Oxford, Yale University and University College London.

In January 2008, Peter Heather was appointed chair of the Medieval History Department and professor of medieval history at King's College London.

In later years, as a result of advances in archaeology, Peter Heather has largely retreated from that position, and now considers the Getica to be partially based on Gothic traditions, and that the archaeological evidence confirms a Gothic origin on the Baltic.

Peter Heather disagrees with the core-tradition theory pioneered by the Vienna School of History, which contends that Germanic tribes were constantly changing, multi-ethnic coalitions held together by a small warrior elite.

Peter Heather has written several works on the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Contrary to several historians of the late 20th century, Peter Heather contends that it was the movements of "barbarians" in the Migration Period which led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Peter Heather accepts the traditional view that it was the arrival of the Huns on the Pontic steppe in the late 4th century which set these migrations in motion.

Peter Heather has been criticised by members of the Toronto School of History.

Michael Kulikowski, who is sometimes associated with this group, has said Peter Heather promotes a "neo-Romantic vision of mass migrations of free Germanic peoples" and wishes "to revive a biological approach to ethnicity".