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.