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Professor Simon Skinner

MA, MPhil, DPhil, FRHistS

Professor Simon Skinner has been Fellow and Tutor in History at Balliol College, and jointly a Lecturer at Oriel, since 1997; he takes Oriel students principally for the three modern British history papers, which span the periods 1685-1830, 1815-1924, and since 1900.

For the Faculty, Professor Skinner teaches the theme paper on ‘The Making and Unmaking of the British Isles, 1603-present’, and currently supervises postgraduate students pursuing such topics as early Victorian Christian Socialism, the nineteenth-century aristocracy and horse racing, and the politics of Queen Victoria’s queens’ speeches.

Research Interests

Professor Skinner works on nineteenth-century British political and religious history. His book ‘Tractarians and the ‘Condition of England’: the Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement’ was published by Oxford University Press in 2004, and he contributed a number of individual and group entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is currently working on the private lives of Robert Peel.

He gave the Lee Seng Tee Lecture at Oriel in 2006, and contributed the chapter on nineteenth-century Oriel to the College history (2013).

He has reviewed for the English Historical Review and the London Review of Books, and broadcast on subjects ranging from Queen Victoria (BBC’s Timewatch) and the Oxford Movement (In Our Time) to speedway racing.

Selected Publications

For a list of Professor Skinner’s latest publications, please see his History Faculty page.