Meet our Alumni

An internationally respected historian, Dr John Adamson has won several prestigious academic awards and The Sunday Times Book of the Year award.

At The University of Melbourne Adamson won the Leeper Medal, the Felix Raab Prize in Medieval History and the University Prize for History. He was then awarded a scholarship to the British School in Rome, the Benet Travelling Scholarship and the University of Cambridge Christ College Research Scholarship. Adamson completed his Doctorate in History at Cambridge, where he remains a Fellow of Peterhouse, the oldest of the Cambridge colleges.

A specialist in early-modern British and European political and cultural history, Adamson has numerous publications. His 1999 book The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500-1750 was The Sunday Times Book of the Year. His most recent work The Noble Revolt: the Overthrow of Charles I won the Samuel Pepys Award for 2007 and was chosen as a Book of the Year by The Economist and The Financial Times.

Adamson has received several prizes and honours for his research, including the Seeley Medal for History, the Thirlwall Prize and the Royal Historical Society Alexander Prize. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Yale University and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was also a Visiting Scholar and Seminar Moderator at Colorado's Aspen Institute.

Adamson regularly contributes reviews and opinion pieces to newspapers such as the London Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Financial Times, and The Literary Review.