Professor Andrew Hopper.
Professor Andrew Hopper is a historian of religion, politics and society in early modern England with research expertise on the British and Irish Civil Wars. He graduated from the University of York in 1999 with a doctoral thesis examining the nature of parliamentarian allegiance in civil-war Yorkshire. Thereafter he was a researcher for the JISC-funded Virtual Norfolk Project at the University of East Anglia (2000-2003) and the AHRC-funded High Court of Chivalry Project at the University of Birmingham (2003-2006). He was appointed Lecturer in the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester in 2006, where he was promoted to Professor (2018) and Director of the Centre (2020). He moved to Oxford Lifelong Learning in September 2021. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Society for Army Historical Research.
The Society for Army Historical Research (SAHR) fellowship scheme recognises service to the Society and distinguished research into the history of the Land Forces of the Crown. Andrew has received his election in recognition of the work entailed in masterminding the Civil War Petitions project as an online resource. Dr Ismini Pells, Course Director for the Advanced Diploma in Local History, also played a central role in this project.
The Petitions project website, funded by a generous standard grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2017–2022), provides photographs and transcriptions of petitions to the state from military veterans and their families for welfare payments as a result of their injuries and bereavement sustained during the English Civil Wars. It aims to share information on the human costs of this devastating series of conflicts, which continued to affect communities long after the fighting was over.
Andrew and Ismini hosted a live webcast in November 2023 for their podcast The World Turned Upside Down, in which a distinguished panel explored the foundations of military welfare in the seventeenth century and the experience of veterans and their families after modern conflicts, and discussed how this brings the past and present together.
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN is a unique FREE OPEN ACCESS resource for everyone interested in this time which shaped the Britain we know today, you can see more here.
During his presentation at the inaugural Malcolm Dick OBE Annual Lecture in Midlands History, Professor Hopper recommended the podcasts produced by The World Turned Upside Down. For those who missed Andy’s talk, or would like to re-visit the subject he spoke on, the following links might be of interest:
A family at war – Lord and Lady Brooke of Warwick – The World Turned Upside Down
The Household Accounts of Robert and Katherine Greville | Historical Transactions
