Professor Stephen Baxter

The Faculty is deeply saddened to announce the death of its colleague Stephen Baxter. Stephen was Professor of Medieval History in the Faculty, and a Fellow and Tutor in History at St Peter’s College. He was a very talented and engaged teacher, who brought to tutorials and classes his enthusiasm and deep learning about Anglo-Norman England. His recent definitive study of the making of the Domesday Book, Making Domesday (OUP, 2025), co-written with his research collaborators Julia Crick and C.P Lewis, is a monument to his historical knowledge, but also his ability to reconstruct the practicalities by which the survey was carried out. In the volume, Stephen enables its readers to understand the methods and assumptions of the body of administrators who took responsibility for the compilation of Domesday almost a millennium ago.

The same combination of imaginative engagement and attention to process characterised much of the valuable work Stephen did for the Faculty, notably through his commitment to undergraduate examining and to the supervision of graduate students. That work made Stephen a central figure in the life of the Faculty, but we will above all feel his loss as a friend and colleague. He was a man of great humanity, who had a considerable impact on all who worked with him. We will miss him greatly.

A more substantial tribute to Stephen’s scholarship will be published here in due course. We shall also add details of any funeral or memorial service when they are known.

If you have any messages that you would like to send on to Stephen's family, please do send them to laura.spence@history.ox.ac.uk.