John Blair (historian)

William John Blair, FSA, FBA (born 4 March 1955) is an English historian, archaeologist, and academic, who specialises in Anglo-Saxon England. He is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford. He gave the 2013 Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford.

John Blair FSA FBA
Blair in 2021
Born	William John Blair (1955-03-04) 4 March 1955 (age 70) Woking, Surrey, England
Title	Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology
Spouse	Kanerva Blair-Heikkinen ​ ​ (m. 2005)​
Parent	Claude Blair
Academic background
Alma mater	Brasenose College, Oxford
Thesis	Landholding, Church and Settlement in Surrey before 1300 (1983)
Doctoral advisor	Barbara Harvey
Academic work
Discipline	History archaeology
Sub-discipline	Early medieval English history
Institutions	The Queen's College, Oxford

Early life and education

Blair was born on 4 March 1955 in Woking, Surrey, England.^[1] His father was Claude Blair, a museum curator and "one of the foremost authorities on historic European metalwork, especially arms and armour",^[2] and his mother was Joan Mary Greville Blair (née Drinkwater).^[1]

Blair was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, a private school in Leatherhead, Surrey.^[1] He then studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1976.^[1] He remained at Brasenose College to undertake postgraduate research and completed his Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1983.^[1][3] His doctoral thesis was titled Landholding, Church and Settlement in Surrey before 1300: this subsequently became the basis of his first book, Early Medieval Surrey (1991).^[4]

Academic career

During his doctoral research, Blair was a Junior Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford.^[3] In 1981, he was elected a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford.^[1][3] Since then, he has been a praelector and tutor in history at the college.^[1] On 1 October 2006, he was awarded a Title of Distinction by the University of Oxford as Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology.^[5] He retired in October 2020 and was made an emeritus fellow of The Queen's College.^[6]

Blair gave the 2013 Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford.^[7] The lecture series was titled "Building the Anglo-Saxon Landscape".^[8]

On 5 May 1983, Blair was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA).^[9] He was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2008.^[10]

Personal life

In 2005, Blair married Kanerva Heikkinen. Together they have two children; one daughter and one son.^[1]

Selected works

• Blair, John (1991). Early Medieval Surrey: Landholding, Church and Settlement before 1300. Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-86299-780-9.
• Blair, John (1994). Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire. Oxford, Stroud and Dover, NH: Oxfordshire Books and Alan Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7509-0147-5.
• Blair, John (2000). The Anglo-Saxon Age: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-285403-2.
• Blair, John (2005). The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-822695-6.
• Blair, John, ed. (2007). Waterways and Canal-building in Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-921715-1.
• Blair, John (2013). The British Culture of Anglo-Saxon Settlement. Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic. ISBN 978-0-9571862-9-3.
• Lapidge, Michael; Blair, John; Keynes, Simon; Scragg, Donald, eds. (2014). The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (2nd ed.). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-470-65632-7.
• Blair, John (2018). Building Anglo-Saxon England. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691162980.
• Blair, John; Rippon, Stephen; Smart, Christopher (2020). Planning in the Early Medieval Landscape. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-78962-116-7.