History Speakers

Dr Kate Heard

Dr Kate Heard is Curator of Prints and Drawings at Windsor Castle. She has published on art and patronage in late medieval England and is the deputy editor of the Journal of the History of Collections. Dr Heard is the co-curator of The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein, currently on display at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse.

Mark Newman

Mark Newman is an Archaeological Consultant in Yorkshire and the North-East region at The National Trust and has been the archaeologist at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal since 1988. Mr Newman's many projects on the property include the estate-wide archaeological and historical landscape survey. This is the foundation of book on the evolution of the estate Wonder of the North, that is soon to be published. Originally from Kent, Mr Newman is a graduate of the University of Birmingham (where his post-graduate thesis was on the prehistoric occupation on the Sutton Hoo burial ground), and has practiced archaeology in Italy, the United States, France, Cyprus, Guyana and Australia as well as widely in the UK.

Dr David Pratt

Dr David Pratt attended Gosforth High School, Newcastle upon Tyne, and read History at Downing College, Cambridge, in the early 1990s, where he developed a particular interest in the Anglo-Saxon period and the reign of King Alfred. As a postgraduate Dr Pratt moved to Christ's College, Cambridge, writing his PhD thesis on the political ideas of King Alfred, research which focused on the body of learned translations attributed to the king. He then spent three years as a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before moving finally back to Downing in 2001 as Director of Studies in History. Dr Pratt's book, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great, was published in 2007. His current research interests include the early history of the English coronation service, Anglo-Saxon law and legislation, taxation and aspects of the rural economy.

Dr Alice Rio

Dr Alice Rio did her PhD on Frankish legal formularies (finished in 2006), at King's College London, under the supervision of Professor Dame Jinty Nelson. After that Dr Rio was Junior Research Fellow at New College, Oxford; a College Lecturer at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; and finally came back to the History department at King's in September 2009 as Lecturer in Medieval European History. Dr Rio has written two books based on her PhD research, a monograph (Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages, CUP 2009) and a translation for students (The Formularies of Angers and Marculf: Two Merovingian Legal Hanbooks). She is currently working on a book on slavery and unfreedom in the early middle ages.

Dr David L. Smith 

Dr David L. Smith was educated at Eastbourne College and at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He has been a Fellow of Selwyn since 1988, where he is currently Director of Studies in History and Tutor for Graduate Students, and he is also an Affiliated Lecturer in the Cambridge History Faculty. Dr Smith has served on the Management Committee of the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon since 2010. He is Governor of Eastbourne College (since 1993), and a Trustee of Oakham School (since 2000). Dr Smith has won the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize and Cambridge University’s Thirlwall Prize for Historical Research. His books include Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640-1649 (1994), A History of the Modern British Isles, 1603-1707: The Double Crown (1998), The Stuart Parliaments, 1603-1689 (1999), and (with Patrick Little) Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate, 1653-1659 (2007).

Dr Dan Todman

Dr Dan Todman works on the social, military and cultural history of Britain's great wars of the twentieth century. He undertook his PhD research at the University of Cambridge before teaching in the War Studies department of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Since 2003, Dan has been a Senior History Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. Dan was co-editor of the diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Britain's senior soldier of the Second World War, published in 2000, and has written extensively on the remembrance of the First World War. His 2005 book, The Great War, Myth and Memory, won the Times Higher Education Supplement Award for Young Academic Author of the year. Dr Todman is currently writing a history of Britain in the Second World War, titled The Price, that seeks to combine the story of the fighting and home fronts, and which will be published by Penguin in 2013.

Dr Andrew Bell

Dr Andrew Bell is Director of Studies in Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celitc Studies in the History Department and Tutor for Admissions at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. His research interests include early medieval British history, especially economic and governmental history and prosopography. Dr Bell was co-author of From the Dark Ages to the Renaissance (2006) and co-editor of Evidence (2008).

Dr Barbara Koenczoel 

Dr Barbara Koenczoel is a Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include 20^th century German history, with a special focus on the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), politics of memory, architecture and memory, political myths and rituals. Dr Koenczoel’s interest in the History of East Germany arose from her time as a student at the University of Leipzig; from which she later received her PhD in 2007.

Dr Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid

Dr Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid is the Rutherford Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. A graduate of University College Cork and Queen's University Belfast, her first book, 'Seán MacBride: A Republican Life', was published earlier this year by Liverpool University Press. She works primarily on nineteenth and twentieth century Irish history.

Dr Gillian Sutherland

Dr Gillian Sutherland is Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Until September 2007 she was Director of Studies in History. Dr Sutherland's publications include Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1880-1940 (Oxford 1984), the chapter, ‘Education’ in The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950 (Cambridge 1990) and Faith, Duty and the Power of Mind. The Cloughs and their Circle 1820-1960 (Cambridge 2006). Dr Sutherland is currently working on a book called Seeking the New Woman. She has been a governor of a maintained sixth form college and is currently chairman of the governors of the schools of The Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge.