Members
The list below shows Durham University research staff who are members of IMEMS. Click the member's name to see a more detailed biography and department.
We also welcome anyone from outside the University with an interest in our work to join. Membership is free of charge. You will receive invitations to our programme of events, with a weekly emails digest about what is happening in the Insitute and further afield. To join IMEMS contact: admin.imems@durham.ac.uk

Professor Alec Ryrie, FBA
Contact Professor Alec Ryrie (email at alec.ryrie@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
I am Professor of the History of Christianity, and my field is the history of the Reformation and of Protestantism more widely. My first book was on the early history of the English Reformation, but I have since ranged further into the history of the Protestant tradition in England, Scotland and internationally. Persistent themes in my work have been the emotional history of religion; religion and politics, war, violence and martyrdom; the history of pious practice and devotion; and histories of religious unorthodoxy, including magic, radical dissent and ‘atheism’. My most recent book, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (2019), the fruit of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship I held from 2015-18, explores some of these issues.
My current research is mostly on the history of how Protestantism became a global religion in the seventeenth century, a largely untold story which I think is revealing about deeper currents in the history of Christianity and of the modern world.
I studied History at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (1990-3) and Reformation Studies at St Andrews (1993-4) before completing a DPhil in Theology at Oxford (1996-99) under the supervision of Diarmaid MacCulloch. I taught in the History department at the University of Birmingham from 1999-2006 before moving to Durham in 2007. I served as Head of Department here from 2012-15. I am now the lead convenor of the History of Christianity seminar. I was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2019.
In addition to my role in Durham, I am Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London, for 2018-21; I am one of the co-editors of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History and in 2019-20 am president of the Ecclesiastical History Society. I have held research fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library (three times), the Huntington Library and the Leibniz Institute for European History. I have also done a wide range of work on radio, television and podcasts, and both print and online journalism. I am a licenced Reader (lay minister) in the Church of England.
In Durham I teach on modules including Introduction to the History of Christianity, The Reformation and its Legacy and The Globalisation of Christianity, and I find I derive a lot of my energy as a historian from working with our excellent students on these and other modules. I have also been lucky enough to supervise some outstanding research students here and am always on the lookout for more. My current and recent students’ topics include:
- Studies of various early modern English theologians including Richard Hooker, Thomas Goodwin, Ralph Venning and John Flavel
- Church and child in early modern England
- The careers of chantry clergy in the sixteenth century
- The reformation of the liturgy under Henry VIII
- Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant views of Lollardy
- The historiography of Lollardy and Wyclif in the 18th-20th centuries
- The theology of death and dying in early modern Scotland
- Calvin's eucharistic theology
- The printing industry and religion in the reign of Edward VI
- The material culture of the sixteenth-century parish church
- The material culture of seventeenth-century English Catholicism
- Pastoral theology in sixteenth-century Lutheranism
- The metrical psalms in the English Reformation
Research Interests
- History and theology of the English Reformation
- History and theology of the Scottish Reformation
- Piety, prayer and spirituality in Protestantism
- Moderation in the Reformation era
- Magic and faith in early modern Europe
Publications
Authored book
- Ryrie, Alec (2019). Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt. William Collins.
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). Protestants: The Radicals who Made the Modern World. London: William Collins.
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). The Age of Reformation: The Tudor and Stewart Realms 1485-1603. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
- Alec Ryrie (2013). Being Protestant in Reformation Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Ryrie, Alec (2009). The Age of Reformation: The Tudor and Stewart Realms, 1485-1603. Harlow: Pearson.
- Ryrie, Alec (2008). The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2006). The Origins of the Scottish Reformation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2003). The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter in book
- Ryrie, Alec (2020). The Missionary Problem in Early Modern Protestantism: British, Irish and Scandinavian Perspectives. In Northern European Reformations: Transnational Perspectives. Kelly, James E., Laugerud, Henning & Ryan, Salvador Palgrave Macmillan.
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). Reformations. In A Social History of England 1500-1750. Wrightson, Keith Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 107-128.
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). Scripture, the Spirit and the Meaning of Radicalism in the English Revolution. In Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform. Heal, Bridget & Kremers, Anorthe Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 100-117.
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). The Nature of Spiritual Experience. In The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations. Rublack, Ulinka Oxford: Oxford University Press. 47-63.
- Ryrie, Alec (2016). Facing Childhood Death in English Protestant Spirituality. In Death, Emotion and Childhood in Premodern Europe. Barclay, Katie, Rawnsley, Ciara & Reynolds, Kimberley London: Palgrave Macmillan. 109-127.
- Ryrie, Alec & Schwanda, Tom (2016). Introduction. In Puritanism and Emotion in the Early Modern World. Ryrie, Alec & Schwanda, Tom Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 1-12.
- Ryrie, Alec (2016). Religion and religious change. In Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources. Sangha, Laura & Willis, Jonathan Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 170-186.
- Alec Ryrie (2013). The fall and rise of fasting in the British Reformations. In Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain. Natalie Mears & Alec Ryrie Farnham, England: Ashgate. 89-108.
- Alec Ryrie (2012). Sleeping, waking and dreaming in Protestant piety. In Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Jessica Martin & Alec Ryrie Farnham: Ashgate. 73-92.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2010). The Afterlife of Lutheran England. In Sister Reformations: The Reformation in Germany and England = Schwesterreformationen Die Reformation in Deutschland und in England. Wendebourg, Dorothea. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 213-234.
- Ryrie, Alec (2009). The slow death of a tyrant: learning to live without Henry VIII, 1547-1563. In Henry VIII and his Afterlives: Literature, Politics and Art. Rankin, Mark, Highley, Christopher & King, John N. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 75-93.
- Ryrie, Alec & Ó hAnnráchain, Tadhg (2008). Les îles Britanniques et l'Irlande. In L'Europe en conflits: les affrontements religieux et la genèse de l'Europe moderne vers 1500-vers 1630. Kaiser, Wolfgang Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 287-319.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2002). Counting sheep, counting shepherds the problem of allegiance in the English Reformation. In The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Marshall, Peter. & Ryrie, Alec. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 84-110.
Edited book
- Ryrie, Alec & Schwanda, Tom (2016). Puritanism and Emotion in the Early Modern World. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Palgrave.
- Jessica Martin & Alec Ryrie (2013). Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Ashgate.
- Natalie Mears & Alec Ryrie (2013). Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain. Ashgate.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2006). Palgrave Advances in the European Reformations. Palgrave Advances. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
- Racaut, Luc. & Ryrie, Alec. (2005). Moderate Voices in the European Reformation. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot: Ashgate.
- Marshall, Peter. & Ryrie, Alec. (2002). The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Journal Article
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). Prologue: When did the English Reformation happen? A historiographical curiosity and its interpretative consequences. Études Épistémè (32).
- Ryrie, Alec (2017). The Protestant Apolitical Tradition and its Legacy. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 108(1): 234-244.
- Ryrie, Alec (2016). ‘PROTESTANTISM’ AS A HISTORICAL CATEGORY. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26: 59-77.
- Ryrie, Alec (2010). The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 101: 114-137.
- Ryrie, Alec (2009). Calvin and Ecumenism. One in Christ 43(2): 25-34.
- Ryrie, Alec (2009). Paths not taken in the British Reformations. Historical Journal 52(1): 1-22.
- Ryrie, Alec (2008). The Reinvention of Devotion in the British Reformations. Studies in Church History 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History: 87-105.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2006). Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism. Past & Present 191(1): 45-76.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2005). England's Last Medieval Heresy Hunt: Gloucestershire 1540. Midland History 30: 37-52.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2004). Reform without frontiers in the last years of Catholic Scotland. The English Historical Review 119(480): 27-56.
- Riordan, Michael. & Ryrie, Alec. (2003). Stephen Gardiner and the Making of a Protestant Villain. The Sixteenth Century Journal 34(4): 1039-1063.
- Ryrie, Alec. (2002). Divine Kingship and Royal Theology in Henry VIII's Reformation. Reformation 7: 49-77.
- Ryrie, Alec (2002). The strange death of Lutheran England. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53(1): 64-92.
Media Contacts
Available for media contact about:
- Middle Ages & Early Modern History: History of Tudor England
- Religion: History of the Reformation
- Theology: History of the Reformation
- Middle Ages & Early Modern History: History of the Reformation
- Middle Ages & Early Modern History: Reign of Henry VIII
Selected Grants
- 2015: Monks in Motion: A prosopographical study of the English and Welsh Benedictines in exile, 1553-1800 (£185190.20 from AHRC)