MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Winner Robin Fleming Of Boston College

Robin Fleming tries to give a voice to the voiceless — the poor, the uneducated, the unknown.

That's quite a chore when people are alive.

And it's even more tricky when they're dead.

But Fleming's goal is even more staggering: giving a voice to the lepers, the executed, the normal and the nameless people who lived in medieval Britain during the fifth century, after the fall of Rome.

This week, Fleming was in her office at Boston College, where she chairs the history department, when she received a phone call from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

They had some big news, which Fleming describes to WBUR's Sacha Pfeiffer.

Robin Fleming, professor and chair of the Department of History at Boston College