He taught at York University in Toronto for almost four decades and most recently held the position of Distinguished Research Professor of History and Classics there.
[1] Scott G. Bruce characterizes him as a central figure in the academic debate on the classical tradition and its reception in medieval Western Europe.
[2] Michael W. Herren was born on December 15, 1940, in Santa Ana, California,[3] and received his Bachelor of Arts in Humanities with a concentration in Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College in 1962.
[4] In 1974, he published an edition and translation of A-text of the Hisperica Famina (whose origin he argues is Ireland); classics scholar Charles Witke commented that "text, commentary and 'translation bear witness both to industry and to insight of a high order".
For the last fifteen years of his full-time teaching career, he also supervised doctoral students in the graduate program in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.