Professor Justin Champion is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 academic

Academia

Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...

 who was head of the department of history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 at Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Holloway, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries...

 (RHUL) between 2005 and 2010. He continues in post at the college.

Professor Champion is a strong proponent of public history. The History Department at Royal Holloway now (since 2009) offers an MA in Public History in partnership with a number of external heritage and media institutions. He is a member of the Committee of Public History for The Historical Association. He has presented or appeared in several TV and radio shows about British history, including the Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 drama documentary The Great Plague in 2001, and the ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 documentary series Kings and Queens in 2003. More recently he has made History features for BBC Radio 3 and 4 on the Glorious revolution of 1688, the execution of Charles I, the history of dueling, and the history of friendship.

Champion has a PhD

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 from Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

. His research and teaching interests include the history of early modern

Early modern Europe

Early modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Europe which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century...

 ideas, blasphemy

Blasphemy

Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...

 and irreligion

Irreligion

Irreligion is defined as an absence of religion or an indifference towards religion. Sometimes it may also be defined more narrowly as hostility towards religion. When characterized as hostility to religion, it includes antitheism, anticlericalism and antireligion. When characterized as...

 in early modern Europe

Early modern Europe

Early modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Europe which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century...

, Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...

, Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of Biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work...

, urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

 disease

Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

, the history of reading and scholarship

Scholarly method

Scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public.-Methods:...

, and the use of information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

in the study of history. He is currently working on the thought and influence of Thomas Hobbes' radical criticism of public religion and its relationship with the early Enlightenment.

Selected publications

• Republican Learning. John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, 1696-1722 (Manchester University Press, 2003)

• John Toland Nazarenus 1718 (edited) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999)

• "Bibliography and Irreligion: Richard Smith’s ‘Observations’", The Seventeenth Century X (1995)

• "John Toland: The Politics of Pantheism", Revue de Synthèse 4 ser (1995).

• "Relational Databases and the Great Plague" in History and Computing (1993)

• "Legislators, Impostors and the Politic Origins of Religion: English Theories of Imposture from Stubbe to Toland" in RH Popkin, S Berti (eds.) Heterodoxy, Spinozism and Freethought (Klewer, 1996)

• Europe’s Enlightenment and National Historiographies Europa (1993)

• London’s Dreaded Visitation: The Social Geography of the Great Plague 1665 (London: Historical Geography Research Monograph No. 31, 1995)

• Epidemic Diseases in London (edited) (London, 1993)

• The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992)

External links

• Faculty webpage
• MA in Public History