Richard Smith (historical geographer)

Last updated

Richard Michael Smith, FBA, FRHistS (born 3 January 1946) is a historical geographer and demographer. He was professor of historical geography and demography at the University of Cambridge from 2003 to 2011, where he is now an emeritus professor, and served as director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (1994–2012). He was also a fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, from 1994 to 2010.

Contents

Career

Richard Michael Smith was born on 3 January 1946. After completing his undergraduate studies at University College London, he carried out his doctoral studies at St Catharine's College, Cambridge; [1] his PhD was awarded in 1975 for his thesis "English peasant life-cycles and socio-economic networks: a quantitative geographical case study". [2]

After lecturing in population studies at Plymouth Polytechnic for a year, Smith took up an assistant lectureship in historical geography at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 1976. He then joined the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and was its assistant director for two years from 1981 to 1983. He also joined Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, as a fellow in 1977, but left in 1983 to take up a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford; while at All Souls, he was also, initially, a lecturer in population history at the University of Oxford until 1989, when he took up a readership and the directorship of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Oxford. He left Oxford in 1994, when he was elected a fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, and appointed director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. From 2003 to 2011, he was also professor of historical geography and demography, and was head of the Department of Geography at Cambridge from 2007 to 2010; he retired from his fellowship in 2010 (having been vice-master of Downing College for six years) and from the Group two years later. [1] [3] [4]

Outside of university, Smith served as president of the Economic History Society from 2007 to 2010, [3] and was editor of The Economic History Review from 2001 to 2007. [1]

According to his British Academy profile, Smith's research focuses on "the history of marriage, principally in medieval Europe, peasant inheritance practices and customary law, welfare practices and their demographic correlates in medieval and early modern England and urban historical epidemiology." [4]

Awards and honours

Smith is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, [5] and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences) in 1991. [4]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

George Arthur Holmes, FBA was Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, 1989-94.

Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke (1879–1963) was an English medieval historian. He was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a professor at Queen's University, Belfast, and the Victoria University of Manchester, and from 1928 until his retirement Regius Professor at the University of Oxford. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1946.

Charles William John Withers, is a British historical geographer and academic. He has been the Geographer Royal for Scotland since 2015, and held the Ogilvie Chair of Geography at the University of Edinburgh from 1994 to 2019.

Hugh Nigel Kennedy is a British medieval historian and academic. He specialises in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, Muslim Iberia and the Crusades. From 1997 to 2007, he was Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London.

Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett was an English historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Wrigley</span> British historical demographer (1931–2022)

Sir Edward Anthony Wrigley was a British historical demographer. Wrigley and Peter Laslett co-founded the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure in 1964.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan J. Smith</span> British geographer and academic

Susan Jane Smith is a British geographer and academic. Since 2009, she has been mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. Smith previously held the Ogilvie Chair of Geography at the University of Edinburgh from 1990 to 2004 and until 2009 was a professor of geography at Durham University, where she played a key role in establishing the Institute of Advanced Study. On 1 October 2011, she was conferred the title of Honorary Professor of Social and Economic Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge for five years, which was renewed until 2021.

Richard Sharpe,, Hon. was a British historian and academic, who was Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. His broad interests were the history of medieval England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He had a special concern with first-hand work on the primary sources of medieval history, including the practices of palaeography, diplomatic and the editorial process, as well as the historical and legal contexts of medieval documents. He was the general editor of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, and editor of a forthcoming edition of the charters of King Henry I of England.

David Bruce Crouch, is a British historian and academic. From 2000 until his retirement in 2018 he was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Hull.

Peter Spufford, was a British historian and academic, specialising in the economics of Medieval Europe. He was Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Cambridge.

Martin Maiden is Statutory Professor of the Romance Languages at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.

Peter Biller is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of York, where he has taught since 1970. Biller is general editor of the York Medieval Press, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research interests include academic thought, heresy, inquisition including AHRB funded research on inquisition trials, and medicine in medieval Europe. He is a member of the board of Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi. He is married to mathematician Miggy Biller.

Vincent Gillespie, FEA is Emeritus J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford. He was editor of the Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies Series from 2002 until 2023, and was the Honorary Director of the Early English Text Society from 2013 until 2023, having previously served as its Executive Secretary from 2004 until 2013. His major research area is late medieval English literature. He has published over sixty articles and book chapters ranging from medieval book history, through Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, to the medieval mystics such as Richard Rolle and, most recently, Julian of Norwich. He has a special interest in the medieval English Carthusians, and in Syon Abbey, the only English house of the Birgittine order. In 2001, he published Syon Abbey, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9, an edition and analysis of the late-medieval library registrum of the Birgittine brethren of Syon Abbey. He is the author of Looking in Holy Books, and the forthcoming A Short History of Medieval English Mysticism. He is the co-editor, with Kantik Ghosh, of After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, with Susan Powell of A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, 1476-1558, with Samuel Fanous of The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, and with Anne Hudson of Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century.

Adam Noel Ledgeway, FBA is an academic linguist, specialising in Italian and other Romance languages. Since 2015, he has been Chair of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge; he has also been Professor of Italian and Romance Linguistics at the University since 2013 and a Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, since 1996. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Salford, Ledgeway studied for his master's degree at the University of Manchester, which also awarded him his doctorate in 1996. He took up a temporary assistant lectureship at Cambridge in 1997, which was made permanent the following year, before being promoted to lecturer in 2001 and senior lecturer three years later.

Bruce Mortimer Stanley Campbell, FBA, MRIA, MAE, FRHistS, FAcSS is a British economic historian. From 1995 to 2014, he was Professor of Medieval Economic History at Queen's University Belfast, where he remains an emeritus professor.

Phillipp Richard SchofieldFLSW is a medieval historian and a professor in Aberystwyth University's Department of History and Welsh History.

Paul Anthony Brand, FBA, FRHistS is a British legal historian. He was Professor of Legal History at the University of Oxford from 2010 to 2014 and a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, from 1999 to 2014.

Simon Charles Robert Swain, FBA, is a classicist and academic. Since 2000, he has been Professor of Classics at the University of Warwick, where he has also been Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Arts and Social Sciences since 2014.

Michael Anderson, OBE, FRSE, FBA is an economic historian and retired academic. He was Professor of Economic History at the University of Edinburgh between 1979 and 2007.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Smith, Prof. Richard Michael", Who Was Who (online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2017). Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  2. ↑ "English peasant life-cycles and socio-economic networks : a quantitative geographical case study", University of Cambridge Library Catalogue. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  3. 1 2 "Richard M. Smith BA, MA, PhD, FBA", Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 "Professor Richard Smith", British Academy. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  5. ↑ "Fellows - S" (Royal Historical Society). Retrieved 5 June 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.