History of Historiography

Daniel Woolf

Principal and Vice-Chancellor

Synopsis: Dr. Daniel Woolf is the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s University, as well as a Professor in the Department of History. His research has focused on early modern British intellectual and cultural history, and the global history of historical writing. He is the author of four books and co-editor of several others, and his most recent books are volumes 3 and 5 of the five-volume Oxford History of Historical Writing, a series of which he is editor-in-chief, and a one-volume history of historiography, A Global History of History. In this episode, Dr. Woolf discusses the history of historiography and how he became interested in this topic during his undergraduate and graduate careers. He explains how early modernists usually study the past as constructed through texts and documents, and that what a scholar makes of the text changes over time. Dr. Woolf also discusses his work on the Tudors and Stuarts, where he looks in unlikely places, such as materials from country record offices, to study this history. Please visit Daniel’s website for more information.