Dr Miles Pattenden

I’m a historian of Catholicism and the Catholic Church since 1500. My main post is as Programme Director of the Europaeum, a network of leading European universities based at St Antony’s College, and I combine that role with a teaching affiliation here at St Peter’s. I write and broadcast regularly on contemporary religious affairs, as well as on how history informs cultural debates.

Teaching

At St Peter’s I teach European history and historiography, including methods papers such as Approaches to History. Over the course of my career, I have taught widely across late medieval, early modern, and modern history.

Research

My work engages three connected areas of study: (1) the papacy, Catholicism and religious institutions, (2) how Catholicism became a global cultural phenomenon, and (3) gender, sexuality, and the uses of the past. My books include Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017) and the three-volume Cambridge History of the Papacy, co-edited with Melodie Eichbauer, Joëlle Rollo-Koster, and Robert Ventresca (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Selected Publications

‘The cult of gay relics and queer medievalism in 1980s Sydney’, with Michael D. Barbezat, Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 269 (2025), 277–324.

‘Clericalism and Sexual Abuse: A Historical and Historiographical Perspective’, in Philip McCosker, Luigi Gioia, and Travis LaCouter (eds.), Catholic Priests and the Matter of Sex: New Approaches to Clericalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026), 39–62.

‘How to do the history of early modern (homo)sexuality’, English Historical Review 142 (2027), forthcoming.