Professor Steven Gunn

Professor Steven Gunn
Fellow and Tutor in History, Merton College and Professor of Early Modern History
Merton
01865 (2)76350
steven.gunn@merton.ox.ac.uk

I teach and research the history of later medieval and early modern Britain and Europe. My recent research concerns accidental death and everyday life in sixteenth-century England. I have also published in the wider fields of Tudor government, warfare, foreign policy and political culture and the comparison of the English state in this period with others in Europe. I write for BBC History Magazine and History Today, have contributed to radio and television programmes such as In Our Time and Time Team, and speak regularly to Historical Association branches and sixth-form conferences. I am currently a trustee of the Royal Armouries.

 

Research Interests

My books include Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk c.1484-1545 (Oxford, 1988), Early Tudor Government, 1485-1558 (Basingstoke, 1995), (with David Grummitt and Hans Cools) War, State and Society in England and the Netherlands, 1477-1559 (Oxford, 2007), Henry VII's New Men and the Making of Tudor England (Oxford, 2016) and The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2018), a revised version of the James Ford lectures in British history which I delivered in 2015. I have edited volumes on Cardinal Wolsey, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales and the courts of England and the Low Countries in the Later Middle Ages.

My most recent book, written with Tomasz Gromelski, is An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death (London, 2025). Other publications derived from the Economic and Social Research Council project which underlay the book include ‘Sport and recreation in sixteenth-century England: the evidence of accidental deaths’ in Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture, edited by Angela Schattner and Rebekka von Mallinckrodt (Abingdon, 2016), 49-63, ‘Coroners’ inquest juries in sixteenth-century England’, Continuity and Change, 37 (2022), 365-88 and ‘Firearms accidents in sixteenth-century England’, Arms and Armour, 20 (2023), 149-59.

My current research falls into three areas. Having used coroners’ inquests to investigate everyday life, I am now using them to ask what deaths in prison tell us about Tudor imprisonment. Meanwhile I am starting work on the relationship between aristocratic power and the patronage of renaissance culture in sixteenth-century Europe north of the Alps. I retain a long-term research interest in the reign of Henry VII.

See page on Merton College website

Teaching

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding later medieval and early modern British and European history or any potential Masters students looking into the same period.

I currently teach:

Prelims

 FHS Masters

History of the British Isles III, 1330-1550

 History of the British Isles III, 1330-1550 State and Society in Early Modern Europe (part of the Mst/MPhil Modern British and European History)
History of the British Isles IV, 1500-1700 History of the British Isles IV, 1500-1700  
European and World History III, 1400-1650

European and World History 6: Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700

  
Paper IV: Approaches to History  Europe, 15:00-17:00  
  Further Subject: The Wars of the Roses, 1450-1500  
  Special Subject: The Trial of the Tudor State: Politics, Religion and Society 1540-1560  
  Disciplines of History  

I supervise research students working on later fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English and international history, a number of whose theses have been published in revised form as books. These include P R Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485-1504 (Oxford, 2009); Yuval Harari, Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History and Identity, 1450-1600 (Woodbridge, 2004); Tracey Sowerby, Renaissance and Reform in Tudor England: The Careers of Sir Richard Morison c.1513-1556 (Oxford, 2010); and Monica Stensland, Habsburg Communication in the Dutch Revolt (Amsterdam, 2012). Others have published articles derived from their theses, such as Andrew Boyle, ‘Hans Eworth's portrait of the Earl of Arundel and the politics of 1549-50’, English Historical Review, 117 (2002), 25-47, Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, ‘Tudor noble funerals’, in The Howards and the Tudors: studies in science and heritage, ed. P G Lindley (Donington, 2015), 34-42, Mark Geldof, ‘The Pike and the Printing Press: Military Handbooks and the Gentrification of the Early Modern Military Revolution’, in International Exchange in the early modern Book World, ed. M McLean, S Barker (Leiden, 2016), 147-68, James McComish, ‘Defining Boundaries: Law, Justice, and Community in Sixteenth-Century England’, in Legalism: Community and Justice, ed. F Pirie, J Scheele (Oxford, 2014), 125-150 and Tim Wade, ‘Richard Pace and the Psalms’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 73 (2022), 57-78.

Publications