Stephen Church FSA FRHistS is a writer and professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia and is regarded as an expert on King John.[1][2] 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.[3]
Career
Church is an expert in Medieval History, specifically the 12th Century[4] and works at the University of East Anglia School of History department which he joined in 1995 after completing his postgraduate work in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society[5] and the Society of Antiquaries of London.[6] He is also a trustee of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust, where he organises the R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture that is given at the opening of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies. The Trust also gives conference bursaries for postgraduate students and sponsors sessions at other conferences and a postgraduate reading group.[7][8]
Since 1994 he has written several articles (including for the journal History) and books on Medieval History, and is a regular conference organiser and speaker on the subject of King John.[9][10][11][12] Church has been regularly acknowledged as strong support to fellow Historians in their writing[13][14][15] and has lectured in Europe on the subject of the Plantagenet Empire.[16] In 2010 he co-lead 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.[17] In 2015 he appeared on Saturday Extra on Australian station ABC Radio with Nicholas Cowdery to discuss why does Magna Carta still matter,[18] 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.[19]
