Professor Peter Burke FBA

During my teaching career, at the University of Sussex (1962-79) and Cambridge (1979-2004), I both lectured and wrote on the history, especially the social and cultural history, of Europe (from Galway to the Urals) from about 1500 to about 1700. One focus of interest has been the Renaissance; another, the history of historical thought and writing; a third, the social history of language and a fourth, the social history of knowledge. I have also been concerned, over the last half-century or so, with the relation (actual and ideal) between history and neighbouring disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, geography and the psychologies. Since my retirement I have continued to pursue the history of knowledge, extending my interests to the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and the Americas. My marriage to a Brazilian historian, Maria Lúcia G. Pallares-Burke, has encouraged an interest in Brazilian history and led to a book that we wrote together about the Brazilian sociologist and historian Gilberto Freyre.