 | Mr Robin Briggs
Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford (H9) The social, religious and political history of early modern Europe, especially France; the French Catholic Church and the history of witchcraft
I was born at Braintree in north-east Essex, and went to school at Felsted, a few miles away. As an exhibitioner at Balliol College, Oxford (1961-4) my principal tutor was Christopher Hill, but I was also much influenced by Richard Cobb and Maurice Keen. Although my original intention was to do research on English history with Keith Thomas, when I was elected to a Fellowship by Examination at All Souls in 1964 John Habbakuk persuaded me to shift to French history, and I became a kind of foreign member of the Annales school under the guidance of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Because I was so ignorant of French history to start with I never did a doctorate, and took some time to settle on a research area. Ultimately my interests took me to the histoire des mentalités, in particular the relationship between the Catholic Reform movement and popular religion. This later led me into the history of witchcraft, although I have always maintained a very general interest in the political, social, and intellectual history of France over the period from the Renaissance to the Revolution. This has included some work on the history of applied science, lately extending to the technical aspects of French naval history. For my whole career I have been a Fellow of All Souls, since 1976 in conjunction with a Special University Lectureship, and have taught in Oxford. I’ve been a Visiting Professor at Paris IV-Sorbonne and at the Collège de France. My major publications are Early Modern France (1977, 1998), Communities of Belief (1989), Witches and Neighbours (1996, 2002), and The Witches of Lorraine (2007). I was Junior Proctor at Oxford University in 1972-3, then subsequently a long-serving member of some important university committees. I am proud of having chaired a committee that reformed the Oxford history course in the 1980s, and of leading a movement to defend Oxford’s academic democracy in recent years. Anyone in my position must regard election to the British Academy as one of the greatest honours they could receive, involving as it does recognition by those best qualified to judge one’s contribution to learning and scholarship. For me it also opens up new possibilities for fruitful interchange with a most distinguished group of early modern historians, many of whom I know already, and the Fellowship will be a great incentive to remain active, coming as it does just at the moment when I formally retire as a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls. |
