Professor Stephen Alford

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 Teaching Officer 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 and Deputy Head of School.

Responsibilities

• Chair in Early Modern British History

Research interests

My particular 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 particular 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 Secretary 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, with publication in Taiwan imminent. My latest book, published by Allen Lane in July 2024, is All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil.

As well as longstanding and continuing research interests in early modern politics and espionage, I have begun to do some archival groundwork on the English and Dutch East India companies in their formative years in the 1590s and very early seventeenth century – a comparative perspective that considers the earliest phase of the East Indies trade from northwestern Europe and the commercial competition between the English and Dutch especially.

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

Current postgraduate researchers

• Rosalyn Cousins
• Chris Toole
• William Poulter