Professor Stephen Baxter
At St Peter’s, I teach survey courses which cover the history of the British Isles from 300 to 1330, and a survey course on Medieval Christendom and its neighbours from 1000 to 1300; I also teach these courses to students at Merton College, with whom St Peter’s has an arrangement to share teaching provision. For the history faculty, I give lectures on the medieval history of the British Isles, and offer teaching and lectures for the Norman Conquest special subject. I realize that reading medieval history may not be a life-changing experience for everyone, but remain hopeful that it should inspire many, and confident that it will enrich all of those who do so!
Research Interests
I teach and research the history of England and Europe in the earlier middle ages with a particular interest in politics, government and social networks in England and Normandy in the long eleventh century.
I am currently writing a book titled a Making Domesday: The Conqueror’s Survey and its Context, which explores how and why King William I’s survey of England was made, drawing on a large-scale collaborate study of Exon, the earliest manuscript of the survey.
I am also leading a long-term project which aims to identify all the landholders named in Domesday Book, as a basis for studying the contours of English landed society before and after the Norman Conquest of England.
My first book, The Earls of Mercia, explored how one leading family negotiated the vicissitudes of English politics for nearly a century before succumbing to the Normans in the 1070s, and interprets the political and social structures of the early English kingdom from the perspective of the aristocracy.
Another current book project aims to something similar for the Norman aristocracy in the age of conquest: this will be a comparative study, but will focus on the family of Earl William fitzOsbern, whose members came to prominence in Normandy in the late tenth century, played a leading role in the conquest of England, and acquired a great cross-channel lordship before losing everything through involvement in rebellion and civil war.
I believe passionately that the fruits of research should be shared with wide audiences whenever possible, and have been fortunate to secure opportunities to write and present television documentaries for the BBC 2 (on Domesday Book) and BBC 4 (on Medieval Children), and to make contributions to radio programmes including BBC Radio 3 (The Essay) and Radio 4 (In Our Time).
Teaching
I would always be pleased to hear from potential DPhil students who share my research interests.
I currently teach:
Prelims |
FHS |
HBI I (The British Isles, 300-1100) | HBI I (The British Isles, 300-1100) |
HBI I (The British Isles, 1000-1330) | HBI I (The British Isles, 1000-1330) |
EWP2 (1000-1300) | EWF3 (The Central Middle Ages, 900-1300) |
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Norman Conquest SS |
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Disciplines |
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Making Domesday: The Conqueror’s Survey and its Context
October 2021|Book -
How and Why was Domesday Made?
December 2020|Journal article|English Historical Review -
Domesday Book and the Transformation of English Landed Society
June 2019|Journal article|Anglo-Saxon England -
The Domesday Controversy: a Review and a new Interpretation
January 2019|Journal article|The Haskins Society Journal: studies in medieval history -
1066 and Government
January 2018|Chapter|1066 in PerspectiveRecent literature has tended to endorse a 'maximum view' of the late Anglo-Saxon government, stressing its power and sophistication before the conquest and its continuity into the early Norman period. This paper suggests that Anglo-Saxon government was in some ways too powerful for its own good, and contributed to the conquest's causation; and that although all the institutions of English government survived the conquest, most were affected by it, some profoundly. The paper concludes with a case study on the making and purposes of Domesday informed by recent work on Exon Domesday. Although the survey could not have been undertaken without some of the institutions of government bequeathed to the Normans by the English, it reveals a very different government at work, drawing on a wide range of precedents in innovative ways, driven by new priorities that a function of the tenurial transformation it records.