Bill Sheils

William J. Sheils FRHistS, known as Bill Sheils, is professor emeritus in history at the University of York and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Sheils is a specialist in the early modern religious and social history of Britain.

Education[]

Sheils was educated at the William Ellis School, North London (1957–64),^[1] and earned his BA at York (1964–67), and his PhD at King's College, London.^[2]

Career[]

Sheils first worked on the Victoria County History before joining the University of York as an archivist at the Borthwick Institute in 1973 where he worked on the post-medieval collections until 1988. He then taught nineteenth- and twentieth-century social and economic history, and subsequently early modern religious and social history with a specialism in Britain.^[2] Sheils retired from teaching in 2011 to become a full-time researcher.^[1]

Sheils has written extensively for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, as well as contributing to the Economic History Review, The Sixteenth Century Journal, and Northern History.^[2]

In 2012, Sheils was the recipient of a festschrift, Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England - Essays in Honour of Professor W. J. Sheils (St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, Ashgate, 2012), edited by Adam Morton and Nadine Lewycky.^[2]

Memberships[]

Sheils is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a former president of the Ecclesiastical History Society.^[2][3]

Personal life[]

Sheils is a parishioner of St Aelred's in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough.^[1]

Selected publications[]

• The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610. Northamptonshire Record Society, 1979. ISBN 0901275409
• The English Reformation 1530–1570. Longman, 1989. (Seminar Studies in History) ISBN 058235398X

References[]