Dr Peter Denley
Reader in History
Location: Arts Two 4.04email: p.r.denley@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7882 8349
Dr Henley is on leave in the Autumn Semester 2012.
Peter Denley graduated in History and Modern Languages at Oxford in 1975, and obtained his doctorate from the same university in 1982. He was appointed Lecturer in History at Westfield College in 1978 (merged with Queen Mary in 1989). He was appointed Senior Lecturer in 1997 and Reader in 2007. In July 2011 he was awarded a Drapers’ Award for Excellence in Teaching, in recognition of sustained excellence in teaching and the facilitation of student learning at QM. In October 2011, Peter was also awarded the ‘Premio “Il portico d’oro” Jacques Le Goff', at the culmination of the international ‘Festa della Storia’ at Bologna, in recognition of achievements in the teaching and dissemination of history.
Research interests:
A medievalist by training, his research interests have been in the history of universities. He was a co-founder, and from 1993 to 2000 editor, of the journal History of Universities (Oxford University Press), and is a member of the International Commission for the History of Universities. He has worked on Italian universities of the late medieval and early renaissance period, and written on many aspects of the subject; he recently published a history of the University of Siena and a history of school teaching in Siena; he is currently working on a book on Italian universities from their origins to 1500. He has contributed to the Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe, and has prepared a revised and expanded edition of a standard textbook, Daniel Waley’s Later Medieval Europe, published in 2001.
For many years Dr Denley was actively involved in developing the use of computers in history, co-founding the international Association for History and Computing in 1986 (he was its first Secretary-General). He has co-edited seven books on historical computing (as it is now termed), as well as writing widely on the subject. He has taught the subject at graduate level (MA in Computer Applications in History, Institute of Historical Research, 1990-96) and to undergraduates, and helped develop an English-language tutorial for KLEIO, a source-oriented data processing programme for historians.
Postgraduate supervision:
Institutional and social aspects of the history of medieval universities.
Publications:
Teachers and Schools in Siena, 1357-1500 (Siena: Betti, 2007).
Commune and Studio in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (Bologna: CLUEB, 2006).
Later Medieval Europe 1250-1520 (with Daniel Waley), 3rd edition (London: Longman-Pearson, 2001).
KLEIO. An English Tutorial (2000: www.qmul.ac.uk/~ugra003/kleio_tutorial/Home_page.htm).
Computing Techniques and the History of Universities (edited) (St Katharinen: Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte/Scripta Mercaturae, 1996).
Source-Oriented Data Processing for Historians: a Tutorial for κλειω (with Matthew Woollard) (St Katharinen: Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte/Scripta Mercaturae, 1993).
Undergraduate teaching:
Culture, Society and Politics in Italy, 1200-1500
Outsiders in the Middle Ages
The Medieval World: Structures and Mentalities
The Black Death
The Hussites: Reform, Revolution and Apocalypse in the Fifteenth Century