Sarah Foot

Sarah Foot (born 1961) is a British early medieval historian and currently holds the Regius Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford.

Educated until 1979 at Withington Girls' School in Manchester, she went up to Cambridge University, joining Newnham College, to study at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, where she was taught by, amongst others, Rosamond McKitterick and Simon Keynes.

She gained her doctorate in 1990 and was, from 1989 to 1990, research fellow at Gonville and Caius College before becoming a fellow and tutor there. In 1993 she took up a lectureship at the University of Sheffield where subsequently, in 2001, she was made senior lecturer. In 2004, she was appointed to the newly established chair of Early Medieval History.^[1]

On 22 February 2007 Queen Elizabeth II appointed Sarah Foot to the Regius Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford.^[2] She is the first woman ever to hold this chair. Postholders are expected to lead research and develop graduate studies within their areas of specialisation. Regius professors are expected to take a leading part in developing the work of the Oxford Theology Faculty. In the past the chair has been held by a number of distinguished scholars. Previous holders of the Chair in Ecclesiastical History include John McManners, Peter Hincliff and Henry Mayr-Harting. The professorship is also annexed to a canonry at Christ Church, although the postholder need only be a lay Church member. At a special ceremony on 6 October 2007 she was installed as Residentiary Canon of the Cathedral.^[3]

Her main areas of research lie in the history of Anglo-Saxon England, particularly Anglo-Saxon monasteries, women and religion, and the Cistercians. She also works on the history of the early medieval Church and society as well as the invention of the English in historiography, and historical theory. In 2001 she was awarded a major grant to carry out research into the ruined Cistercian abbeys of Yorkshire. Among her current projects are the charters of Bury St Edmunds Abbey and writing a biography of Aethelstan, the first king of all England.

Sarah Foot is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. She is currently one of the editors of the Oxford History of Historical Writing.

She has one son and is married to Michael Bentley, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. Her father is the historian M. R. D. Foot.

Notes

1. ^ "Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History University of Oxford". Official bulletin of 10 Downing Street. http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page11064.asp//. Retrieved 2008-02-23. 
2. ^ "First woman to be Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford". University of Oxford. http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/070222.shtml. Retrieved 2008-02-23. 
3. ^ "Welcome for Canon Professors". Christ Church, Oxford. http://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/news/2007/canon-professors-welcome. Retrieved 2010-10-10. 

Selected publications

• Handbook of Historical Theory, Sarah Foot and Nancy F. Partner (eds.), forthcoming
• "Patrick Wormald as Historian", in: Stephen Baxter, Catherine E. Karkov, Janet L. Nelson and David Pelteret (eds.), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, Farnham, Ashgate 2009. ISBN 0-7546-6331-0
• "Where English becomes British: Rethinking Contexts for Brunanburh", in: Julia Barrow and Andrew Wareham (eds.), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, London, Ashgate 2008. ISBN 0-7546-5120-7
• Monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2006. ISBN 0-5218-5946-8
• "Reading Anglo-Saxon charters: Memory, Record or Story?", in: Elizabeth. M. Tyler and Ross Balzaretti (eds.), Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, Abingdon, Marston 2006. ISBN 2-5035-1828-1
• "Finding the Meaning of Form: Narrative in Annals and Chronicles" in: Nancy F. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (Writing History), London, Hodder Arnold 2005. ISBN 0-3408-0845-4
• "The Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon 'Nation-State'" in: Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (eds.), Power and the Nation in European History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2005. ISBN 0-5218-4580-7
• "Confronting Violence: a Medieval Perspective on the Ethics of Historiography" Storia della storiografia 42 (2002), pp. 23–41
• Veiled Women I: the Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing 2000. ISBN 0-7546-0043-2
• Veiled Women II: Female Religious Communities in England, 871-1066, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing 2000. ISBN 0-7546-0044-0
• "Remembering, Forgetting and Inventing: Attitudes to the Past in England after the First Viking Age", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series 9 (1999), pp. 185–200
• "English People" in: Michael Lapidge et al. (eds), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford, Blackwell 1998, p. 170f. ISBN 0-6311-5565-1
• "The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series 6 (1996), pp. 25–49

See also

• Regius Professor
• University of Sheffield

Persondata
Name	Foot, Sarah
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Date of birth	1961
Place of birth
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Place of death

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