Rate My Professor Christian Liddyy

Professor Christian Liddy serves as Professor of Late Medieval History in the Department of History at Durham University, where he is a member of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. His research centers on towns and cities between the 12th and 16th centuries. Most of his published work focuses on English medieval towns studied comparatively and decentered from the nation-state. He examines the concept of 'town-ness' and urban distinctiveness, portraying urban life as a site of intellectual and physical labour, manufacture, flux, and instability. Liddy's interests encompass family and lineage, home and household, citizenship, popular revolt and protest, relations between provincial cities and the English crown during the Hundred Years War, the history of the palatinate of Durham including its bishopric, rural society interactions, and local political culture. He explores the social history of politics from the ground up.

Liddy is the author of War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350-1400 (Boydell & Brewer, 2005), The Bishopric of Durham in the Late Middle Ages: Lordship, Community and the Cult of St Cuthbert (Boydell Press, 2008), and Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250-1530 (Oxford University Press, 2017). He has co-edited North-east England in the Later Middle Ages (with R. Britnell, Boydell & Brewer, 2005) and Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell (with B. Dodds, Boydell Press, 2011). Recent journal articles include 'The making of towns, the making of polities: Towns and lords in late medieval Europe' (Past & Present, 2024), 'The household, the citizen, and the city: towards a social history of urban politics in the late Middle Ages' (Social History, 2024), 'Who decides? Urban councils and consensus in the late Middle Ages' (Social History, 2021), and 'Family, lineage and dynasty in the late medieval city: Re-thinking the English evidence' (Urban History, 2020). Liddy served as Associate Editor of Urban History from 2007 to 2012 and was Academic Curator for the Magna Carta and the Changing Face of Revolt exhibition at Palace Green Library in 2015, organizing a public lecture series on citizenship. He held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship in 2014-2015 and a Small Research Grant in 2009-2011. Recent visiting appointments include Professeur invité at the Sorbonne in 2024 and Visiting Professor at the University of Turin in 2025. He welcomes PhD applications on any aspect of medieval urban history.