Welcome

My primary research interests lie in the history of early modern London, though I teach over a broad range of early modern British and European courses. My current research ranges over a variety of issues in London history: charity, popular politics, taxation, and governance.

Since January 1999 I have been the General Editor of the Royal Historical Society Bibliography, a major project funded by the AHRC to make bibliographic data on British History electronically available.

I am the Humanities Adviser to the Oxford Learning Institute, assisting on staff development courses.

I am Literary Director of the Royal Historical Society with responsibility for the Camden Series and the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

I also serve on the Publications Committee of The Institute for Historical Research (where I am a research associate), the Academic Advisory Committee for the Early English Books On-Line and Text Creation Partnership project, the Early Modern Academic Advisory panel for the National Archives, and I am an Academic Adviser to the Records of Early English Drama project.

Research Interests

CURRENT PROJECTS

You can view some  of my recent publications through the links opposite.

Early modern London

I have published recently on a variety of issues relating to the history of early modern London, including taxation, popular politics, government, historical writing, and charity. I hope shortly to embark on a general book on the history of early modern London. You can view an additional research resource, the Gazetteer of Military Levies from the City of London, 1509-1603 through this site.

Royal Historical Society Bibliography on British and Irish History

I am the General Editor of this major electronic bibliographical tool. An on-line edition, went live in July 2002, and the database (regularly updated) now incorporates 407,000 records. Our project collaborates with Irish History On-Line based at NUI Maynooth.
The RHS Bibliography is currently supported by the Royal Historical Society, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. IHO is supported by the Irish Research Council.

The Oxford Holinshed Project

In association with Dr Paulina Kewes (English) and Dr Felicity Heal (History) I am preparing a parallel text edition of the 1577 and 1587 versions of Holinshed's Chroncles. This project is being funded by the Fell Fund of Oxford University, and is preparatory to a full-scale edition, for which other funding is being sought. The Research Assistant is Dr Henry Summerson.

Keble Past and Present

I have co-written a  new History of the College with  the Warden, Averil Cameron. It will be published in November 2008.  Copies can be ordered from the publisher. The price is discounted if ordering before publication. A sample chapter is available on the website along with a slide show of some of the many images from the book. Some of the rich material we were unable to use in the book has now been made available on the College website, under Keble's Past.

Documents on Elizabethan History

The late Douglas Price, Fellow in Modern History at Keble left a near-complete edition of Elizabethan Historical Documents, which I am preparing for publication.

Teaching development

In conjunction with Dr John Bennet (formerly Tutor in Archaeology, Keble College) and Duna Sabri (Institute for the Advancement of University Learning, University of Oxford) I have secured a grant from the Subject Centre for History, Classics, and Archaeology to investigate student understandings of what makes a good essay. The research assistants on the project are Joanne Bailey (History) and Helen Gittos (Archaeology and Anthropology). The final report on this project is now available on the Oxford Learning Institute website.

Recent Publications

• 'Hospitals in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England' in Europaisches Spitalwesen. Institutonelle Fursorge in Mittelalter und Fruher Neuzeit. Hospitals and Institutional Care in Early Modern Europe, ed. Martin Scheutz et al. (Oldenbourg, 2008)
• '"Civic Culture" in Later Medieval and and Early Modern London' in Journal of Urban History, 34:2 (2008), 370-379
• 'City and Court Connected: The Material Dimensions of Royal Ceremonial, ca. 1480-1640' in Huntington Library Quarterly, 71:1 (2008), 157-79
• 'The Charity of London Widows in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries' in Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Norman L. Jones and Daniel Woolf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
• 'Discourses of History in Early Modern London' in Huntington Library Quarterly, 68: 1-2 (2005), 205-26
• The Haberdashers’ Company in the Later Twentieth Century (Chichester: Phillimore, 2004)
• 'John Stow, Citizen and Historian' in John Stow (1525-1604) and the Making of the English Past, ed. I.A. Gadd and A. Gillespie (London: British Library, 2004)
• Various articles in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. C. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), with subsequent electronic updates
• with S. Adams, G.W. Bernard, M. Greengrass, P. Hammer, and F. Kisby, Religion, Politics, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• 'London and Westminster' in A Companion to Renaissance Drama, ed. A. Kinney (Oxford: Blackwells , 2002)
• 'The Charity of Early Modern Londoners' in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 12 (2002), 223-244
• 'The Livery Companies and Charity' in Guilds, Society, and Economy in London, 1450-1800, ed. I.A. Gadd and P. Wallis (London: Centre for Metropolitan History, 2002)
• 'Government in Early Modern London: the Challenge of the Suburbs' in Two Capitals. London and Dublin, 1500-1840, ed. P. Clark (London: British Academy, 2001)
• 'The Arts and Acts of Memorialization in Early Modern London' in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, ed. J.F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
• 'The Burden of Taxation on Sixteenth-Century London' in Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 599-627
• 'The Government of London, 1500-1650 ' in London Journal, 26: 1 (2001), 19-28
• 'Material Londoners?' in Material London, c. 1600, ed. L.C. Orlin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)
• 'Politics and Government, 1540-1700' in The Cambridge Urban History of Great Britain, vol. II, 1540-1840, ed. P. Clark (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000)
• 'Popular Politics in Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century London' in Londinopolis: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Early Modern London, ed. P. Griffiths and M. Jenner (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)
• 'Social Networks in Early Modern London: The Evidence from Pepys' Diary' in Communities in Early Modern England, ed. A. Shepard and P. Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)
• 'Shakespeare's London' in A Shakespeare Companion, ed. D.S. Kastan (Oxford: Blackwells, 1999)
• 'The 1590s: Apotheosis or Nemesis of the Elizabethan Regime?' in Fins de Siècle: How Centuries End, 1400-2000, ed. A. Briggs and D. Snowman (London and New Haven:Yale U.P., 1996)
• 'The Nostalgia of John Stow' in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre, and Politics in London, 1576-1649, ed. D. Smith, R. Strier, and D. Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• 'Patronage and Clientage in Elizabethan London' in Patronages et Clientélismes 1550-1750 (France, Angleterre, Espagne, Italie), ed. C. Giry-Deloison and R. Mettam (Université Charles de Gaulle Lille III, Institut Français du Royuame-Uni, 1994)
• The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991)
• The History of the Haberdashers' Company (Chichester: Phillimore, 1991)
• Hugh Alley's Caveat: The London Markets in 1598 (London Topographical Society, 1988)
• 'The London Lobbies in the Later Sixteenth Century' in Historical Journal, 31 (1988), 17-44
• Associate Editor, Tudor England: An Encyclopaedia, (2001)
• Section editor, 'England and Wales, 1500-1700 in Royal Historical Society Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History: Publications of 2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001)
• Section editor, 'England and Wales, 1500-1700' in Royal Historical Society Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History: Publications of 1999 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000)

Academic Biography

• Research Associate, Institute of Historical Research, London (2000 - present)
• Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Keble College,Oxford (1991 - present)
• Fellow and Director of Studies in History, Downing College, Cambridge (1989 - 1991)
• Research Fellow, Girton College, Cambrige (1986 - 1989)