UH Press authors biographies

John Baker lives in Cambridge. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Name Studies, University of Nottingham, and a part-time tutor for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.

Peter Bakker is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Cuillin Bantock read Zoology at Oxford University from 1955 to 1958 and was then awarded a three-year Christopher Welch Scholarship of the University for research in developmental cytogenetics.

MA and D.Phil degrees were awarded in 1965. In 1961, he studied painting for three years at Camberwell College of Art in London.

From 1965 to 1989 he worked as a professional environmentalist in London and elsewhere, publishing several books and over twenty research papers in evolutionary ecology.

He returned to painting full-time in 1989.

Gerry Barnes, MBE, served as Head of Environment at Norfolk County Council, and is now a researcher at the University of East Anglia, studying the history of trees and woodlands in eastern England.

Other titles by this author

• Rethinking Ancient Woodland - with Tom Williamson
• Trees in England - with Tom Williamson and Toby Pillatt

Janet Berry has a doctorate from the University of Birmingham for which her thesis was a study of Moseley’s development as a suburb. She has published a number of scholarly journal articles and is active in the Moseley Society. She lives in Moseley.

Jon Berry is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Hertfordshire, teaching largely on the PGCE secondary programme.

Previously, he taught English in comprehensive schools for 28 years and was a senior lay official for the National Union of Teachers.

He contributes regularly to the Guardian education section.

Kalwant Bhopal is Professor of Education and Social Justice at the School of Education, University of Southampton. She has published widely in journals on issues of gender and ethnicity.

Other books by this author

Gender, "Race" and Patriarchy: A study of South Asian Women (Ashgate 1997).

Helen Boak is the former Head of History at the University of Hertfordshire.

Gyonata Bonvicini was born in 1972 in Codogno, Milan and he currently lives and works in Berlin.

He holds a doctorate in Contemporary Art History from the University of Parma and has spent the last ten years working with public and commercial art organisations in Europe.

He was Project Manager and Director of Westlondonprojects as well as Project Manager of Artprojx, engaged in initiating and executing exhibition programs, maintaining up-to-date information on contemporary art trends, and producing catalogues and publications.

Alongside this, he has independently curated a number of exhibitions and screenings, including:

• La petite histoire at Kunstraum Niederösterreich (Wien, 2008)
• Evil Sisters at Canal at Peer (London, 2007)
• The Endless Summer at Westlondonprojects (London, 2006)
• Three Cities: Berlin, Milan, London (along with Anna-Catharina Gebbers and Paolo Zani, 2006)
• Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi (Berlin, 2006)
• Jaybird at Zero… (Milan, 2005)
• Illusion of Security, a project for the Prague Biennale 1

Since 2002, he has been a regular contributor to the publications Flash Art Magazine and Aroundphotography.

James P. Bowen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Liverpool.

Gordon Brand (also known as Gordon Spencer-Brand) graduated with a degree in mathematics from the University of Exeter and subsequently joined Hatfield College of Technology in 1966 as a programmer in the computer unit. He became manager of the Elliott 803 computers and, with the creation of the computer centre, had various roles including computer manager, head of operations and services, then deputy director and, ultimately, director of the computer centre. He served thirty years at Hatfield and took early retirement in 1996.

Richard Britnell taught in the University of Durham from 1966 until 2003.

He was a specialist in the economic and social history of the medieval period and was the author of several monographs and textbooks.

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

Alex Brown works on the economic and social history of rural England across the medieval and early modern periods.

His thesis was a study of how rural society in Durham adapted to the economic problems of the fifteenth-century recession and how this affected their ability to respond to the inflation of the sixteenth century. This study focused upon the development of agrarian capitalism in the Durham countryside: a region uniquely characterised by a high concentration of ecclesiastical landownership and the precocious development of large-scale coal production.

This has been further developed by postdoctoral research examining the rise of the coal industry, the supposed gentrification of merchant wealth, and the experience of lay landowners like the Nevilles and Lumleys. Together, this forms the basis of his first monograph on Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham: Recession and Recovery, c.1400-1640 published by Boydell and Brewer in 2015.

Alex won the New Researchers Prize at the annual conference of the Economic History Society in 2012 and held the EHS Postan Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research in 2012-13. He is currently an Addison Wheeler Fellow at Durham University, exploring downward social mobility and institutional memory in English rural society.

He co-organised ‘Agriculture and Industry: the Development of Rural England, 1000-1700’, a colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research, 1 July 2013, with James Bowen.

This resulted in the edited volume Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society (with University of Hertfordshire Press, 2016). He also co-organised 'Coping with Crisis: Re-Evaluating the Role of Crises in Economic and Social History', a three-day international conference at Durham University, 26-28 July 2013, with Andy Burn and Rob Doherty, which inspired a collection of essays on Crises in Economic and Social History: A Comparative Perspective (Boydell, 2015).

Research Interests

• The economic and social history of pre-industrial England
• The development of agrarian capitalism
• Social structure and social mobility
• Rural and agricultural history

Research Groups

• Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia
• Early Modern
• Economic/Labour
• Landscape/Memory
• Medieval
• Social Cultures

Selected Publications

Books: authored

• 2015 Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham: Recession and Recovery, c.1400-1640, Boydell and Brewer.

Books: edited

• 2016 (co-edited with Bowen, James P.) Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society, 1300-1800: Revisiting Postan and Tawney, University of Hertfordshire Press.
• 2015 (co-edited with Burn, Andy & Doherty, Rob) Crises in Economic and Social History: A Comparative Perspective, Boydell Press.

Essays in edited volumes

• Forthcoming  'Church Leaseholders on the Dean and Chapter's Estates, 1540-1640: The Rise of a Rural Elite?', in Green, Adrian & Crosbie, Barbara  (eds.), The Economy and Culture of North-East England, 1500-1800, Boydell and Brewer.
• 2016  'A Money Economy? Provisioning Durham Cathedral across the Dissolution, 1350-1600', in Brown, A. T. & Bowen, James P.  (eds.), Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society, 1300-1800: Revisiting Postan and Tawney, University of Hertfordshire Press.
• 2016 (co-authored with Bowen, James P.) 'Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society', in Brown, A. T.  & Bowen, James P.  (eds.), Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society, 1300-1800: Revisiting Postan and Tawney, University of Hertfordshire Press.
• 2015 (co-authored with Burn, Andy & Doherty, Rob) 'Coping with Crisis: Understanding the Role of Crises in Economic and Social History', in Brown, A. T., Burn, Andy & Doherty, Rob (eds.), Crises in Economic and Social History: A Comparative Perspective, Boydell Press.
• 2015  'Economic Life', in Swanson, Robert  (ed.), The Routledge History of Medieval Christianity, 1050-1500, Routledge, pp. 295-308

Journal papers: academic

• 2014  'Estate Management and Institutional Constraints in Pre-Industrial England: the Ecclesiastical Estates of Durham, c.1400-1640', Economic History Review 67, pp. 699-719
• 2010  'Surviving the mid-fifteenth-century recession Durham cathedral priory, 1400-1520', Northern history 47, pp. 209-231

Mary Butcher is an artist, curator and basketmaker.