皇家华人

John Sabapathy is Professor of History and works on the comparative history of Europe/Christendom primarily in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. He also works on the Anthropocene (the proposed epoch in which humans became geological forces globally) and co-convenes UCL Anthropocene 鈥� a major initiative in this area.

His monograph , a study of English officers in a European context, won for 2015. An edited collection on Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism was published in 2020. John is working on two projects. One is a wide-ranging study of thirteenth-century Europe for the new Oxford History of Medieval Europe series. The second explores the place and contribution of history in the Anthropocene.听

Before returning to UCL (where he took his PhD), he was a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford. Between his BA and graduate degrees, John worked in public policy on sustainable development and corporate accountability with a range of international think tanks, NGOs, corporations, and British and European governmental bodies.

PhD supervision

John is happy to discuss research proposals from students on topics addressing the political, intellectual, religious and/or cultural history of medieval Europe as well as the Anthropocene. Please get in touch at the start of the academic year in which you wish to apply.

Supervision: John currently supervises Genevieve Caulfield (sight and trust in medieval optics and theology; LAHP funded); Joe Hopper (writing and redemption at St Victor; UCL funded); and Hugo Raine (Italian communal economic and legal thinking in practice; UCL funded); he second supervises Vanessa Da Silva Baptista (medieval magic tricks). He has supervised/co-supervised theses on Polish ecclesiastical institutions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Dr Agata Zielinska, LAHP funded) and thirteenth-century queens鈥� letters (Dr Ana茂s Waag) and second supervised theses on lying, deceit and casuistry (Dr Emily Corran, LAHP funded), ideals of elite conduct in Norway, Denmark and England (Dr Louisa Taylor), and papal overlordship (Dr Benedict Wiedemann, LAHP funded).

Major publications

• 鈥楥annibal, scorpion, horse, owl: institutional hypocrites and the early fourteenth-century church鈥�, The Church, Hypocrisy and Dissimulation, (2024), pp. 91-120
• 鈥楪ui Foucois, la 芦 r茅forme 禄, le Midi et l鈥橝ngleterre鈥�, Pape Cl茅ment IV, et le Midi, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 57 (2023), pp. 299-333
• 鈥楾he emperor between person and institution: officer, office and accountability in Dante鈥檚 imperial thinking鈥�, in Mar铆a 脕ngeles Mart铆n Romera and Hannes Ziegler (ed.), 听, Studies of the German Historical Institute, London (Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 53鈥�75
• in Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge, ed. Christine van Oertzen and Sebastian Felten, Journal for the History of Knowledge 1/1 (2020), pp. 1-21
• Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism, co-edited with Antonia Fitzpatrick (Royal Historical Society/Institute of Historical Research: London, 2020)
• , with Antonia Fitzpatrick, in Fitzpatrick and Sabapathy (ed.), Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism, pp. 1-48
• , in Fitzpatrick and Sabapathy (ed.), Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism, pp. 197-214
• 鈥楽ome difficulties in forming persecuting societies before Lateran IV canon 8: Robert of Courson thinks about communities and inquisition鈥�, in Gert Melville and Johannes Helmrath (ed.), The Fourth Lateran Council: Institutional Reform and Spiritual Renewal (Didymos-Verlag, 2017), pp. 175-200
• , Thirteenth-Century England 15, Authority and Resistance in the Age of Magna Carta. Proceedings of the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2013 (Boydell and Brewer, 2015), pp. 115鈥�136
• (Oxford University Press, 2014)

For a full list of publications, see .

Projects and fellowships

• Directeur d鈥櫭﹖udes invit茅, EHESS, Centre Alexandre-Koyr茅, (April 2022)
• Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow, 鈥楾he institutionalization of Europe in the thirteenth century鈥� (2018鈥�2019)
• Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2019)
• Working Group Member, 鈥楬istory of Bureaucratic Knowledge鈥�, Department II, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (2018-2019)
• UCL-Oxford University project 鈥業ndividuals and institutions in Medieval Scholasticism鈥�, CO-PI with Dr Antonia Fitzpatrick (formerly Oxford University).

Media听

• Contributor to UCL podcast, 鈥楥OVID-19 鈥� the whole story鈥� on the history of epidemics, 2020
• 鈥業nquests and accountability: on the Iraq Inquiry鈥�, History Today, (5th July 2016)
• on parallels between the 'gig' (e.g. Uber/Deliveroo) and 'feudal' economies, 2016
• Wrote and presented marking the 2012 millennium of St Alfege's Church, Greenwich (St Alfege/脝lfheah was an archbishop of Canterbury, possibly martyred in 1012 by being battered to death by ox bones at a drunken Viking banquet)

Teaching

• Anthropocene Studies (GEOG0183, final year 1 term UG module, on offer from 2024)
• Gaia's Ancestors: Approaches to Medieval Ecologies and Environments (HIST0905 MA 1 term module, on offer from 2024)
• The First European Union? Christendom 1187鈥�1321 (HIST0033, undergraduate 1st鈥搒econd year survey module)
• Emergency History: A Natural History of Humanity for the Present (HIST0399, undergraduate 2nd鈥揻inal year thematic module)
• COVID-19 in Social and Historical Perspective (ANTH0212, final year 1 term cross-Faculty module)
• The Invention of the Question: A History of European Thinking, 1100鈥�1400 (MDVL0054, MA 1 term module)
• Between Rome & Avignon: Antichrists, heretics, princes & the papacy 1294鈥�1334 (final year undergraduate special subject, not on offer 2020-1)
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