Professor Chris Woolgar
Professor of History and Archival Studies, Chair of Exams; MA Convenor
Chris Woolgar is Professor of History and Archival Studies at the University of Southampton.
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 the Faculty of 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, to be published by the British Academy in 2019 (Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 57‒58). This prints 75 states and views of account for the properties of one of the greatest landowners of medieval England either side of the Black Death.
Journal of Medieval History
I am editor of the Journal of Medieval History. 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.
Archival interests
There is a close link between archival work and my research interests – and I have published on forms of documentation and communication from accounts and wills, to correspondence, maps and political papers. I work with the University Library’s Special Collections Division to develop research and teaching linked to its holdings. We are currently recording a series of short videos based on the collections: People, Papers and Pasts.