Past Lectures
2024: Alexandra Walsham, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge
‘The Persecution of the Tongue: Speech, Silence, and Religious Coexistence in Early Modern England’
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2023: Barbara Savage, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought in the Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania
'Uncharted Territory: The Future of African American History'
Published as Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale University Press, 2023)
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2021: Chris Wickham, Chichele Professor of Medieval History (Emeritus) at the University of Oxford
'Rethinking the Commercial Revolution of the 11th and 12th-Century Mediterranean'
Published as The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180 (Oxford University Press, 2023)
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2019: Amanda Vickery, Professor of Early-Modern History, Queen Mary University of London
'What did Women want? Female Hopes from the New Look to the Three Day Week'
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2018: Alison Bashford, Research Professor of History, University of New South Wales
‘Trustees of Evolution: The Huxleys from Empire to World, c.1825-1975’
Podcasts are available from the link above.
Published as An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family (Penguin Books, 2022)
2017: Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early-Modern History, Queen Mary, University of London
'Strangers into Neighbours: Dealing with Diversity in Medieval European Cities'
Podcasts are available from the link above.
Published as Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe (Cambridge UP, 2020)
2016: Jay Winter, Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University:
'Imagining War in the Twentieth Century and Beyond'
Published as War Beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2017)
2015 Lyndal Roper, Fellow of Oriel College and Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford:
'Luther, Subjectivity and Biography'
Published as Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther's World and Legacy (Princeton UP, 2021)
2014 Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford:
'Fighting Fate: Wartime Society and the Making of Modern China, 1937-1945'
Podcasts are available from the link above.
Published as China's Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard UP, 2020).
2013 Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford:
'Remembering and Repetition in France: Defeat, Colonialism and Resistance since 1940'
Podcasts are available from the link above.
Published as Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present (Cambridge UP, 2019)
2012 Peter Hennessy, Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London:
'History, Country, Autobiography: Writing about One's Own Times'
The Lectures were published as Distilling the Frenzy: Writing the History of One's Own Times (Biteback Publishing, 2012)
2011 Betty Wood, Reader in American History, Girton College, University of Cambridge
'The Many-Headed Hydra Revisited: Bound Workers in the American South, ca 1720-1775'
1. 'Leaving Together'
2. 'Working Together'
3. 'Socializing Together'
4. 'Conspiring Together'
2010 Professor David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University
‘Civil War from Rome to Iraq: A History in Ideas’
1. Treading on Fire: Writing the History of Civil War
2. Uncivil Civil Wars: Early Modern Meanings
3. Every Great Revolution is a Civil War
4. Civil War: What is it Good For?
Published as Civil War: A History in Ideas (Knopf/Yale UP, 2016).
2008 Robin Osborne, Professor of Ancient History, King's College, University of Cambridge
‘The history written on the classical Greek body'
Introduction to Lecture Series
Lecture 1: The citizen body
Lecture 2: Foreign bodies
Lecture 3: Dirty bodies
Lecture 4: Godsbodies
Bibliography for these lectures
Published as The History Written on the Classical Greek Body (Cambridge UP, 2011).
2007 Sir Christopher Bayly (University of Cambridge)
'Liberalism at large: South Asia and Britain c. 1800-1947’
Introduction to lecture series
Lecture 1: South Asian thought at the dawn of the liberal Age, 1800-1840
Lecture 2: Imagining a sociology of South Asia, 1840-70
Lecture 3: Decolonising the mind: South Asians and Victorian thought, 1870-1900
Lecture 4: South Asian Liberalism under strain: 1900-1940
Published as Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge UP, 2011).
2006 Robert Bartlett (University of St Andrews),
‘The natural and the supernatural in the middle ages’
Published as The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge UP, 2008).
2005 Christopher Haigh, (University of Oxford)
‘The plain man’s pathway to heaven: kinds of Christianity in post-Reformation England, 1570–1640’
Published as The Plain Man's Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England, 1570-1640 (Oxford UP, 2007).
2004 Roy Foster, (University of Oxford)
'Metamorphoses: the strange death of romantic Ireland, 1972–2000’
Published as Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change c. 1970-2000 (Allen Lane, 2007).
2003 Michael Bentley, (University of St Andrews)
‘English historiography in the age of Butterfield and Namier’
Published as Modernizing England’s Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870–1970 (Cambridge UP, 2005).
2002 Peter Burke, (University of Cambridge)
‘Languages and communities in early modern Europe’
Published as Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge UP, 2004).
2001 William Cronon (University of Wisconsin-Madison),
‘Saving nature in time: the past and the future of environmentalism’
2000 Michael Mann (University of California, Los Angeles),
‘Imposing labels on ages: modernity and globalization’
1999 Olwen Hufton (Merton College, University of Oxford),
‘Social welfare provision in early modern Europe’
1998 Steve Smith (Universityof Essex),
‘Revolution and identity: workers in Russia and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’.
Published as Revolution and People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge UP, 2008).
1997 Linda Colley (Yale University),
‘The frontier in British history’.
Published as Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850 (Cape, 2002)
1996 Adrian Hastings (University of Leeds),
‘Religion, ethnicity and nationalism’.
Published as The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge UP, 1997)
1994 Anthony Low (Clare Hall, University of Cambridge),
‘The egalitarian moment: Asia, Africa 1950–1975/80’
1993 G. W. Bowersock, (Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton)
‘Martyrdom and Rome’.
Published as Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge UP, 1995).
1992 Michael Gilsenan, (University of Oxford)
‘Towns and cities in the modern Arab world’
1991 Ian Kershaw, (University of Sheffield)
‘Nazism in German history’
1990 A. A. M. Bryer, (University of Birmingham)
‘Community in the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds’