Stephen Church

Stephen Church is a writer and professor of medieval history at the University of Lincoln and is an expert on King John. In 2015 his book King John: England, Magna Carta, and the Making of a Tyrant was one of the Financial Times best books of the year.

Career

Church is an expert in Medieval History, specifically the 12th Century and works at the University of Lincoln which he joined in 2023 after working for twenty-eight years at the University of East Anglia. He completed his postgraduate work in London. He is also a trustee of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust, where he organised the conference and edited the proceedings of Anglo-Norman Studies between 2020 and 2024. The Trust also gives conference bursaries for postgraduate students and sponsors sessions at other conferences and a postgraduate reading group.

He has written more than thirty articles edited seven collections of essays, two medieval documents, and written three monographs on a variety of topics to do with the period 1000 to 1300 His most substantial works have been on the subject of King John and Magna Carta. Church has been regularly acknowledged as strong supporter of fellow Historians in their writing and has lectured in Europe on the subject of the Plantagenet Empire. In 2010 he co-led with Professor Elisabeth Tyler (University of York) two reading groups which aimed to read Orderic Vitalis's Historica ecclesiastica from start to finish and reflect on its content. In 2015 he appeared on Saturday Extra on Australian station ABC Radio with Nicholas Cowdery to discuss why does Magna Carta still matter, and co-presented the BBC programme The Last Journey of the Magna Carta King, part of the BBC Taking Liberties season, with archaeologist Dr Ben Robinson.

Publications

References

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