Jonathan Shepard is a British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 historian specializing in early medieval Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

, and the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

. He is regarded as a leading authority in Byzantine studies

Byzantine studies

Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, costumes, religion, art, such as literature and music, science, economy, and politics of the Byzantine Empire. The discipline's founder in Germany is considered to be the philologist Hieronymus...

 and on the Kievan Rus. He specializes in diplomatic and archaeological history of the early Kievan period. Shepard received his doctorate in 1973 from Oxford University and was a lecturer

Lecturer

Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...

 in Russian History at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

. Among other works, he is co-author (with Simon Franklin

Simon Franklin

Simon Franklin is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is a Fellow of Clare College.In 2007 he was awarded the Lomonosov Gold Medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding achievements in research in Russian history and culture.-Selected bibliography:*...

) of The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (1996), and editor of The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008).

Among Shepard's theories is that the breakdown in Byzantine-Khazar relations and the shift in Byzantine foreign policy towards allying with the Pechenegs and the Rus against Khazaria was a result of the Khazar conversion to Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

.

As author

• Shepard, Jonathan (1998) "The Khazars' Formal Adoption of Judaism
  Judaism
  Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
  
   and Byzantium
  Byzantium
  Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
  
  's Northern Policy" in: Oxford Slavonic Papers; 1998
• Shepard, Jonathan (1997) "Byzantine Soldiers, Missionaries, and Diplomacy under Gibbon's Eyes" in Rosamund McKitterick and Roland Quinault, eds. Edward Gibbon and Empire, Cambridge: U. P., 1997
• Franklin, Simon; Shepard, Jonathan (1996) The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200. London and New York: Longman.
• Shepard, Jonathan (1992) "A Suspected Source of John Scylitzes' Synopsis Historion: the great Catacalon Cecaumenus" in: Byzantine and modern Greek studies.
• Shepard, Jonathan (1976) "Scylitzes on Armenia
  Armenia
  Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
  
  in the 1040s" in: Revue des études armeniennes.

As editor

• Shepard, Jonathan, et al., eds. (2008). The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire. Cambridge University Press.
• Shepard, Jonathan; Franklin, Simon, eds. (1992) Byzantine Diplomacy: papers of the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990. Aldershot; Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum.