Our People

Dr Geoffrey Tyack

Emerita/Emeritus Fellow, Fellow

MA MLitt Oxford, PhD London, FSA, FRHist.Soc.

geoffrey.tyack@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

Geoffrey Tyack was brought up in London and read History at St John’s College, Oxford.  He subsequently did an MLitt in Architectural History, followed later, as a mature part-time PhD student, by a doctorate at the University of London. 
He recently retired as Director of Stanford University’s undergraduate programme in Oxford, but continues to teach courses on urban and architectural history for the MSc in English Local History, and to supervise D.Phil students.

His main academic interests are in British and European architectural history, especially from the C18 to the C20, and the history of urban planning since the Renaissance. His books include: Sir James Pennethorne and the Making of Victorian London (Cambridge University Press 1992); Warwickshire Country Houses (Phillimore 1994); Oxford: an Architectural Guide (Oxford University Press 1998); Modern Architecture in an Oxford College: St John’s 1945–2005 (OUP 2005); and John Nash: Architect of the Picturesque (English Heritage, 2013). He was co-author of the revised volume on Berkshire in the Pevsner Buildings of England series (Yale University Press 2010), and he has contributed articles to numerous academic journals, to the Grove Dictionary of Art, to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has also contributed to several volumes of essays and papers, including The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester University Press, 2011), Sir George Gilbert Scott, 1811-1878: an Architect and his Influence (Shaun Tyas, 2014) and the Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin (2015). He is currently working on books on the historical development of the British urban landscape and on the architecture of Oxford’s colleges.

Geoffrey Tyack will be  President of the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society from June 2017. He is also a Trustee of the Oxford Preservation Trust, a council member of the London Topographical Society, and Editor of the Georgian Group Journal. He is a keen amateur musician, specializing in early keyboard instruments and the organ.