Department of History

The University of Reading

Staff Research Interests

Benjamin Arnold is Professor of Medieval History. He is the author of German Knighthood 1050-1300 (1985), Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (1991), Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany. A study of regional power 1100-1350 (1992), and Medieval Germany 500-1300: A political interpretation (1997), as well as a number of articles, chapters, papers and reviews on medieval Germany and medieval Europe. From 1999 to 2000, the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) will be funding his further researches into the social history of Germany.

Nicholas Atkin is Senior Lecturer in History. In addition to numerous articles on twentieth-century France, he has published Church and Schools in Vichy France, 1940-1944 (New York, 1991), Pétain (London, 1998) and France at War, 1934-1944 (London, 2001 forthcoming). He is co-editor, with Frank Tallett, of Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 (London, 1991), Catholicism in England and France since 1789 (London, 1995) and the Right in France, 1789-1997 (London, 1998). He is currently finishing a study of French exiles in Britain during the Second World War as well as a history of European Catholicism, jointly written with Frank Tallett. His interests are primarily the political and religious history of twentieth-century France, in particular the Vichy years.

BA, PhD (Nottingham), FRHistS. Professor of History. Director of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, 1986-9. British Academy Research Readership, 1989-91. Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 1997-8. Senior Fellowship, National Humanities Center, North Carolina, 1998-9. Author of The Trial of the Templars (1978), The Two Cities: Medieval Europe, 1050-1320 (1992), The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (1994), Crusaders and Heretics, 12th to 14th Centuries (1995), and many articles on the Templars, the Cathars, the crusader states, popular crusading movements, the lepers in medieval society, western attitudes to Latin Greece, and the reign of Philip the Fair. Editor, The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick (1994). General editor of A History of Medieval Europe, published by Routledge. Editor of The Journal of Medieval History. At the present time preparing books on The Cathars and The Templars (a collection of documents in translation) (with Keith Bate) and, in the long term, a study of material life in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Jonathan Bell is a lecturer in American history, specialising in the political and social history of the United States since the Great Depression. He is in the process of preparing to publish his doctoral dissertation on the impact of Cold War ideology on American politics in the late 1940s, and has already published an essay on that subject in an American university textbook. He is also beginning research on a new project on the California Democratic Council in the 1950s and 1960s.

Professor Ralph Houlbrooke held a British Academy Research Fellowship, 1993-4. Author of Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520-1570 (1979), The English Family, 1450-1700 (1984), The English Family in Diaries, 1576-1716 (1988) and Death, religion, and the family in England, 1480-1750 (1998). Editor of The Letter Book of John Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich (1975), and of the collection of essays Death, Ritual and Bereavement (1989); joint editor of The Courtship Narrative of Leonard Wheatcroft, Derbyshire Yeoman (1986). Joint Honorary Editor of the Norfolk Record Society, 1986-1996. Currently writing a book about Death, Religion and Family in England, 1480-1750. He has supervised a number of graduate students' theses on sixteenth- to eighteenth-century English religious and social history. He has close links with the Berkshire Record Society, is helping to compile a handlist of the Berkshire Archdeaconry records, and is particularly keen to promote research in Berkshire's extensive early modern archival resources.

Stuart Kidd is a twentieth-century American historian with a research interest in the cultural history of the interwar period in the United States. He has written a number of essays and articles on American culture and society during the 1930s and, in particular, on photographic representations of other United States. 

David Laven is a specialist in nineteenth-century Italy. His research focuses on the impact of Napoleonic rule, and Habsburg hegemony in the peninsula after the Congress of Vienna. He also writes on British perceptions of Italy in the nineteenth century. Recent publications include 'Punti di vista britannico sulla questione veneziana 1814-49' in A. Lazzaretto Zanolo, La "primavera liberale" nella terraferma veneta 1848-1849 (Marsilio, Venice, 2000) and a collection of essays jointly edited with Lucy Riall of Birkbeck College, entitled Napoleon's Legacy (Berg, Oxford , 2000). He is currently completing a monograph entitled The Habsburg Administration of Venetia, 1814-35 for OUP and is also working on short histories of the Risorgimento (OUP) and Venice from 700 to 2000.

Anne Lawrence is a medieval historian, specialising in the cultural and intellectual history of England in the 11th and 12th centuries. Within this broader field, her particular interests are in the monasteries and other religious houses of the period: their schools, libraries, authors, scribes and artists. Her publications consist primarily of a series of articles on the libraries and manuscript illumination of cathedral priories, such as Canterbury and Durham, and the books of reforming orders such as the Augustinians and the Cistercians. She is currently working on a full-length study of the impact of the Norman Conquest on the monastic culture and manuscript production of Northern England. Related research interests are: other aspects of the history of manuscript illumination c. 900-1200; the aesthetic doctrines of the Cistercians; regional cultures in medieval England.

Malcolm Morrison’s general research interests lie in the field of the colonial period of American history, primarily between 1689 and 1763. More specific work has been done on the role of the religious interests in Anglo-American politics. Current work in progress focuses on aspects of the administration of the American colonies, particularly the activities of royal governors and officials, utilising among other resources the extensive holdings of colonial resources available at the Public Records Office at Kew.  He is currently Director of American Studies.

Dr Philip Murphy is the author of Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951-64 (1995), and Alan Lennox-Boyd: A Biography (1999). He is also co-editor of Macmillan: Cabinet Papers 1957-63 on CD-ROM (1999). He is currently editing the Central Africa volume in the British Documents on the End of Empire series. In addition to his work on the Conservative Party and British imperial policy, he maintains an interest in the politics of post-colonial Africa and the history of the British intelligence community. He has recently produced an article on intelligence operations in Central Africa from 1945-63.

Helen Parish is a lecturer in History. Her research interests lie in Early Modern History, particularly the Reformation in England and Europe. She is the author of Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation :Precedent, Policy, and Practice (Ashgate, 2000), and has published in Studies in Church History and Reformation. She was a contributor to Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth Century Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon (1996), and is currently editing a volume of essays Faith and Practice : The Development of Protestant Superstition? with Dr W.G.Naphy (University of Aberdeen) Manchester University Press, 2001. Recent research includes a study of the rewriting of medieval history in era of the Reformation, with a particular interest in the lives of the saints.

Dr Frank Tallett is Director of the MA in Modern History and has responsibility for the Department's European links. His research interests are twofold; warfare in the early-modern period and the religious history of France during theold regime and Revolution. He is the author of War and Society in Early-Modern Europe, 1495-1715 and has edited, with Nicholas Atkin, Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 and Catholicism in Britain and France.

Stephen Taylor is Reader in Eighteenth-Century History. His main research interests lie in the political and religious history of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on which he has published numerous articles. With Clyve Jones (Institute of Historical Research) he has edited Tory and Whig. The Parliamentary Papers of Edward Harley, 3rd Earl of Oxford, and William Hay, M.P. for Seaford, 1716–1753 (1998). He has also edited various collections of essays and documents: The Church of England c.1689–c.1833. From toleration to tractarianism, with John Walsh and Colin Haydon (1993); Hanoverian Britain and Empire, with Richard Connors and Clyve Jones (1998); From Cranmer to Davidson (1999); Parliament and the Church 1529–1960, with J. P. Parry (2000). He is General Editor of the Church of England Records Society, Reviews Editor of Parliamentary History, Associate Editor for the New Dictionary of National Biography, and a member of the editorial board of Studies in Modern British Religious History, a monograph series published by Boydell and Brewer. At present, he is preparing a book entitled, The Church and the Whigs. Politics and Religion in England 1714–1760, and editing The Ent’ring Book of Roger Morrice. Volume III: 1687–1689. He is also, with Kenneth Fincham (University of Kent) and Arthur Burns (King’s College London), director of a major AHRB-funded project, ‘The Clergy of the Church of England Database’.

Emily West is a lecturer in American history. Her main research field is slavery in the American South, especially relationships between male and female slaves in the antebellum era. She has published articles in the Journal of Family History (1999), the Journal of American Studies (1999) and Slavery and Abolition (2000). She is currently working on a book of her PhD thesis entitled Chains of Love: Relationships between Male and Female Slaves in Antebellum South Carolina.

Roy Wolfe is a lecturer in history. His main interest is in twentieth century British history, especially in the changes in the role of the state in regard to social regulation. He is co-author of a recently published article on Calendar Reform.  He has recently complete a study of public health policy towards venereal disease, and is currently researching the regulation of the gaming industry in Britain. He is particularly interested in the application of information technology to historical research and teaching.