Pohl, Walter: - Walter Pohl is Professor of History at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research, University of Vienna and Director of the Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research addresses many aspects of early medieval history, with a special interest in Italy. His publications include The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567-822 (2018), Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013) and over 200 journal articles. In 2004 he was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize, and he has been a recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant (2010) and a Synergy Grant (2019).