Professor Chris Woolgar BA, PhD, Dip. Arch. Admin, FBA, FRHistS
Professor of History and Archival Studies, Fellow of the British Academy

I read Archaeology and History at the University of Southampton, before training as an archivist at the University of Liverpool. My archival career saw me working with collections from the twelfth century to the present day, including the archives of two Oxford colleges (Magdalen and Corpus Christi), and the Wellington, Palmerston and Mountbatten papers and the archives of Anglo-Jewry in the University Library at Southampton – where I was archivist from 1982, and Head of Special Collections 1991-2013. I was appointed to a chair in History and Archival Studies in 2007 and transferred to what is now the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in 2013.
I have a long-standing interest in the history of the everyday, especially in the medieval period, in patterns of documentation and in editorial work. At Magdalen, I discovered some medieval domestic accounts, and subsequently did a doctorate at the University of Durham on the development of these records. Publications on medieval social and economic history include two volumes of household accounts edited for the British Academy’s Records of Social and Economic History series, an edition of the testamentary records of the bishops of England and Wales for the Canterbury and York Society, and three books with Yale University Press: The Great Household in Late Medieval England, The Senses in Late Medieval England, and The Culture of Food in England, 1200‒1500.

With Barbara Harvey, I have edited The States of the Manors of Westminster Abbey, c.1300‒1422, published by the British Academy in 2019 (Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 57‒58) – which prints 75 overall accounts for the properties of one of the greatest landowners of medieval England either side of the Black Death.
I have been the editor of the Journal of Medieval History since 2009 - the journal publishes articles on all aspects of the history of Europe and the Mediterranean from the fifth century to the start of the sixteenth. Submissions are welcome through the journal’s website.
I was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020.
Qualifications
- BA, Archaeology and History, University of Southampton 1978
- Diploma in Archive Administration, University of Liverpool 1979
- PhD, University of Durham, 1986