Grant Holders

Professor Anne Curry
Staff profile – University of Southampton

Anne is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton. She took her BA at Manchester University, and continued her studies there for an MA by research, focusing on Cheshire in the reigns of Henry IV and V. She was then appointed a Research Assistant at Teesside Polytechnic, where she began her doctoral studies on Military Organisation in Lancastrian Normandy, 1422-1450. She taught at the University of Reading from 1978 to 2004, serving as head of History and Faculty Director of Teaching and Learning in Arts Humanities, before moving to her present post at Southampton. She is a member of the AHRC Postgraduate Committee and also of the RAE 2008 sub-panel for History. She is also editor of the Journal of Medieval History, and co-editor of the medieval volume of the Cambridge History of War.

She has worked extensively in the archive repositories of  England and France and has given papers worldwide on her researches, as well as appearing on several TV and radio programmes. Her publications include The Hundred Years War (Macmillan Press, 1993, second edn. 2003), The Battle of Agincourt. Sources and Interpretations (Boydell 2000), Agincourt. A New History (Tempus Publishing, 2005), as well as scores of articles in English and French. She was also editor of the Henry VI sections of the Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (PROME). (SD Editions and Boydell, 2005).

She first began to be interested in the use of databases for analysis of armies when the British Academy made an award to enter all of the names of the men-at-arms who had served in Lancastrian Normandy. She has since extended this database to the campaigns of Henry V. She is now developing new research projects on the treaty of Troyes, and on women in the Hundred Years War, as well as completing a major study for OUP on The English Army in Normandy, 1415-1450.

The School of Humanities at the University of Southampton is one of the largest of the University’s twenty-two Schools, with some 290 staff, 3500 students (2300 FTE), and an annual income of around £13 million. Most academic staff are based in one of our seven disciplines: Archaeology, English, Film, History, Modern Languages, Music and Philosophy. We have several interdisciplinary groupings and research-based Centres, such as the Centre of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The School has a strong research culture, which is reflected in a high level of publications across all disciplines, and a vigorous programme of disciplinary and interdisciplinary seminars and conferences. There are excellent library facilities. The University has just invested £10m. in a major refurbishment and extension of the Hartley Library, which also holds the Wellington, Palmerstone and Mountbatten papers. The History discipline has 23 staff, with research interests ranging from late antiquity to the present, and received a 5 rating in the 2001RAE.

Dr Adrian R Bell
Staff profile – ICMA Centre

Adrian is Director of Teaching and Learning at the ICMA Centre, University of Reading.   He completed his first degree at the University of Hull and his MA and PhD at the University of Reading – the latter focusing on military organization in the reign of Richard II.  His book, which incorporated this research, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century, was published by Boydell in Autumn 2004.  He currently lectures on the Hundred Years War to Part 3 undergraduates in the School of History. 

Adrian was an early adopter of technology as an aid to research, and much of the analysis undertaken for his thesis was made possible by utilizing relational databases. He is currently managing the distance learning version of the MSc programme at the ICMA Centre which utilises on-line technologies (such as blackboard) and e-lectures (developed as part of a project), co-funded by the teaching and learning fund of The University of Reading.  Adrian is now an acknowledged expert in the use of technology for both teaching and research.

Adrian is also interested in the history of finance and has recently completed an ESRC project with Professor Chris Brooks and Dr Paul Dryburgh, entitled – ‘Modern Finance in the Middle Ages? Advance contracts for the supply of wool’.  This successful project has produced a book for Cambridge University Press, a volume for the List and Index Society, full length articles for the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Medieval History (all forthcoming), and shorter notices for Citeax: Commentarii cistercienses  and Professional Investor. More details of this project and its outputs can be found at the UK Data Archive, study number 5325: www.data-archive.ac.uk.

The ICMA Centre (www.icmacentre.rdg.ac.uk) – the Business School for the Financial Markets - at the University of Reading, where Dr Bell is based, was founded in 1991 through a grant from the International Capital Market Association.  The Centre occupies a striking, purpose-designed building on the University of Reading Whiteknights campus, donated by ICMA (which is the trade association for some 500 international banks and securities houses).  This building houses a 120-seat lecture theatre and two dealing rooms.  More recently ICMA has donated £5 million to The University of Reading to fund further development of the ICMA Centre. The money will finance a three-year building project to expand teaching facilities and add new dealing rooms, seminar rooms and staff offices. The new building is expected to be open for students in 2008.