- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2019
- Sections
- Theology and Religious Studies
Alec Ryrie is a historian of Protestant Christianity in general and of religion in early modern England and Scotland in particular. He is interested in the cultural, social, political and emotional history of religion, and has written on subjects including faith and doubt; martyrdom, violence and religious warfare; magic and deception; moderation and radicalism; childhood religious experience; and liturgy and prayer, formal and informal. He is currently researching the early history of global Protestant missions. He is co-editor of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History and (in 2019-20) president of the Ecclesiastical History Society. He is also a licensed Reader in the Church of England.
The British Academy 10-Minute Talks: What the defenders of the slave trade have to teach us
21 Oct 2020 The British Academy on YouTube
Professor Alec Ryrie FBA discusses the 18th-century writers who tried to mount a principled defence of the slave trade and how the arguments they used are uncomfortably reflected in the present.

Current post
Professor of the History of Christianity, Durham University; Professor of Divinity, Gresham College
Past appointments
Durham University Head of Department of Theology and Religion
2012 - 2015
University of Birmingham Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Modern History
1999 - 2006
Publications
The British Academy 10-Minute Talks: What the defenders of the slave trade have to teach us
21 Oct 2020 The British Academy on YouTube
Professor Alec Ryrie FBA discusses the 18th-century writers who tried to mount a principled defence of the slave trade and how the arguments they used are uncomfortably reflected in the present.
