Adrian is currently PI on the AHRC funded project, The People of 1381.

He is interested in the History of Finance and recently completed a major project funded by the Leverhulme Trust with Professor Chris Brooks and Dr Helen Killick. The project “The first real estate bubble: Land Prices and Rents in Medieval England c. 1200-1550” ran for three years from 2015. The project builds upon a previous project for Leverhume with Professor Chris Brooks and Dr Tony Moore on medieval foreign exchange. A previous major project for the ESRC with the same team investigated the early and innovative use of credit finance by a succession of English medieval monarchs (10.5255/UKDA-SN-6880-1) and an earlier ESRC project entitled “Modern Finance in the Middle Ages? Advance contracts for the supply of wool” (10.5255/UKDA-SN-5325-1).

Professor Bell also specialises in the Hundred Years War and his book, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century, was published by Boydell and Brewer in Autumn 2004. In 2006 he was awarded a major grant from the AHRC (jointly with Professor Anne Curry, University of Southampton) to investigate “The Soldier in Later Medieval England” for more details see http://www.medievalsoldier.org/. The findings are outlined in a major work The Soldier in Later Medieval England, published by Oxford University Press (2013).

Adrian has also appeared on The Unexpected World of Business podcast to discuss football finance.

His working papers are available on SSRN at: http://ssrn.com/author=486048

Professor Bell frequently provides expert comment for media opportunities. Recent comments on COVID-19 include:

• “Euro 2020 should be postponed”
• Government passing blame for isolation impact to public
• Premiership salary decision needs to be grounded in the real world
• Financial impacts of pandemic need more emphasis