Professor John Arnold FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2026
- Subjects
- Medieval studies
- Sections
- Medieval Studies
Summary
John H. Arnold is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge, a post he has held since 2016. Prior to that he worked at Birkbeck, University of London, and more briefly before that at the University of East Anglia. He was educated at a state school south of London, and studied at the University of York for both his bachelors and doctoral degree.
His research explores the social and cultural worlds of the western European middle ages, predominantly focussing on the lives and experiences of non-elite people. This has involved various different themes including heresy, inquisition, popular uprisings, gender and sexuality, literacy and orality, emotions and the senses. A particular pursuit has been the issue of what 'belief' really meant for most people in the middle ages, in an experiential as much as a conceptual sense; and this has included a sustained strand of interest in medieval scepticism, doubt, and 'unbelief'. Recent work has also engaged with more socioeconomic questions, particularly focussed on the peasantry of southern France in the central middle ages.
He has also had a long-standing interest in questions of historiographical methods and theory, and has published work for a wider audience in that vein, translated into 16 languages worldwide.
He is a Fellow of King's College Cambridge, a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and a member of the Past & Present Society."