University of St Andrews professors recognised for high achievement
Professor John Hudson of the School of History and Professor Lorna Hutson of the School of English have been elected Fellows of the British Academy.
Professors Hudson and Hutson are among 42 new Fellows named by the Academy, in recognition of their world-leading research into the humanities and social sciences, including law, linguistics, economics and history. Together, Professors Hudson and Hutson have co-directed The Centre for Mediaeval and Early Modern Law and Literature at the University of St Andrews for the past five years.
The British Academy is the premier national body representing the humanities and the social sciences, the counterpart of the Royal Society for the natural sciences.
An expert in both mediaeval studies and legal history, Professor John Hudson’s work focuses on 9th to 13th century England. His research also spans mediaeval historical writing and late 19th century study of mediaeval England. At the University of St Andrews, he is founding Director of the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research, and he has a visiting position as William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan.
Professor Hudson is already a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has given invited research lectures around the world, is general editor of the series Medieval Law and its Practice (Brill), and is currently on the editorial board for The Mediaeval Journal.
Upon receiving his Fellowship of the British Academy, Professor Hudson said: “I am delighted and honoured to be elected to the British Academy. I am particularly pleased to be elected in the fields both of Mediaeval Studies and of Law. The University of St Andrews has a long-held reputation as one of the top centres in the world for the study of Mediaeval History and is now establishing one in that of law through the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research.
“I owe more than can be said to my colleagues in St Andrews over the years, taking particular pleasure in collaborative work with postgraduate and post-doctoral scholars here in recent times, and with established colleagues in Europe and North America. I hope that my Fellowship of the British Academy will allow me to extend such collaborative work in the future.”
Professor Lorna Hutson is Berry Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews and she will take up the post of Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford on 1 September 2016. Her interests are in the rhetorical bases of Renaissance Literature, emphasizing fiction’s affinities with forensic rhetoric.
Her 2007 book, The Invention of Suspicion, won the Roland Bainton Prize for Literature and her most recent book, Circumstantial Shakespeare (2015), is based on the Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lectures delivered in 2012. She has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and held Fellowships at the Folger and the Huntington Libraries, and been Alice Griffin Shakespeare Fellow at Auckland, New Zealand. Her Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature 1500-1700 is forthcoming. She currently holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for research on 16th century Anglo-Scots literary relations. In 2016 she delivered the British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, The Shakespearean Unscene.
Professor Lorna Hutson commented: “I am honoured and delighted to be elected to the British Academy and especially to have been elected while still in post at the University of St Andrews, before I take up my new post at Oxford in September.
“St Andrews has an exceptionally vibrant Faculty of Arts, within which English Literature is outstanding.
“Literary criticism has the advantage of bringing a fine-grained precision to the broader work of cultural and historical analysis. I’ve been privileged, at St Andrews, to have the chance of working with historians and legal historians who appreciate the insights literature affords.
“I hope that I will be able, as a Fellow of the British Academy, to work for the furthering of such interdisciplinary conversations and for the advancement of the Humanities in general.”
Today (Friday 15 July), the British Academy announced that Professor Sir David Cannadine will be its thirtieth President. He will take up office in July 2017 for a four-year term, succeeding Lord Nicholas Stern.
Professor Cannadine is a modern British historian who was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 1999. He is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a Visiting Professor of History at Oxford University, and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Professor Cannadine said: “I am hugely thrilled and honoured to be following Nick Stern as the next President of the British Academy.
“In more ways than one, these are challenging times, for the Academy, the people it represents and the values it embodies. The current climate of opinion seems ever more hostile to academic excellence, intellectual distinction and evidence-based research, and to humane tolerance and liberal internationalism. These are the essential verities and transcendent truths that the Academy was established to recognise and promote, and during my presidency I am determined to do all I can to proclaim, safeguard and reaffirm them.
“In the current political and economic climate this will not be an easy task, and I hope I may count on the support of the Academy’s benefactors, Fellows and staff: truly, we are all in this together, and there is a great deal of urgent and important work to do.”
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Issued by the University of St Andrews Communications office, contactable on 01334 462530 or [email protected].
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