Professor Stephen Alford
- Position: Professor
- Areas of expertise: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history, specialising in the political history of early modern Britain, especially the Tudors
- Email: S.Alford@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 3606
- Location: 3.05 Michael Sadler Building
Profile
I arrived in Leeds as Professor of Early Modern British History in 2012 after fifteen years of teaching in the University of Cambridge, where I was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of History (1997-99), Ehrman Senior Research Fellow in History at King’s College (1999-2000) and then a University Lectuer and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of History. I was a Fellow of King’s College between 1999 and 2012. At Leeds I have served in the School of History as Director of Student Education, Deputy Head of School, and Director of PGR Studies.
Responsibilities
- Chair in Early Modern British History
- Director of PGR Studies in History
Research interests
My area of research is early modern (sixteenth- and seventeenth-century) British history, with most of my publishing from the middle Tudor years through to the reign of King James I. I have a special interest in the Cecils, one of the most important families at the later Tudor and Jacobean royal courts. As well as essays and articles, I have published seven books, with Cambridge University Press, Yale University Press, Allen Lane (Penguin Press) and Bloomsbury USA. Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (Yale University Press, 2008) was shortlisted for the Marsh Biography Award and London’s Triumph: Merchant Adventurers in the Tudor City (2017) was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize awarded by English PEN. The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (2012) was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. The Watchers has been published in translation in Poland and China, and London’s Triumph in China and Taiwan. My latest book, published by Allen Lane, is All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil, which was both a Telegraph and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year, and a finalist for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. My current writing project is a study of Queen Elizabeth I as a political thinker.
I have longstanding interests in early modern politics and espionage and in the English and Dutch East India companies in their formative years in the 1590s to the mid-seventeenth century.
Qualifications
- MA in Modern History, University of St Andrews, 1993
- PhD in Modern History, University of St Andrews, 1997
Professional memberships
- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, elected 2000
Student education
I teach early modern history at all levels of the BA in the School of History, the History MAs and PhD supervision. I supervised to completion four PhD projects in Cambridge and five in the School of History at Leeds. I welcome all expressions of interest in PhD research at Leeds. I am an experienced internal examiner and have externally examined PhD dissertations in universities across the United Kingdom.
Research groups and institutes
- Empires and Aftermath
- Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums
- War Studies