Our People
Dr Kate Tiller OBE
Emerita/Emeritus Fellow, Fellow
Reader Emerita in English Local History
OBE, DL, BA, PhD Birmingham, MA Oxford, FSA, FRHistS
Founding Fellow 1990; Reader Emerita in English Local History; Visiting Fellow in English Local History, University of Leicester; Visiting Professor in History, University of Suffolk; Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire. Appointed OBE for services to local history in the New Year’s Honours, 2019. Elected 1990; Senior Tutor 1994-6; Dean of Degrees 1995/6; Vice-President 1997/8; Emerita Fellow 2003
Kate Tiller is a Founding Fellow of the College. As Director of Studies in Local History at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education she planned and implemented the University’s first graduate degree course specifically designed for part-time students, the MSt (now MSc) in English Local History, introduced in 1993. Its students have played a major part in Kellogg’s development. In 1995 English Local History was one of three subjects included in the University’s first, pilot project for part-time research degrees, bringing Kellogg some of its earliest doctoral students. In 2001-2 the University made the part-time DPhil permanent. Kate Tiller was closely involved in securing practical support for part-time students through access to University library and IT facilities and financial support, including Kellogg’s first Graduate Studentship scheme.
Her academic fields are British social and local history, with particular research interests in English rural change post-1750, and in religion and community in Britain since 1730. She also writes on the academic practice of local history, with current interests in local histories of the 20th century and of remembrance and community. She continues to teach and supervise master’s and DPhil students.
Recent publications include:
Religious Census Returns 1851 for Berkshire, Berkshire Record Society, 14 (2010), lx +133pp.
‘Chapel people in 1851: the example of Berkshire’, in C.Skidmore (ed.), Changing faces of chapel and chapel people (Chapels Society, Miscellany 2, 2010).
‘ The Place of Methodism. A study of three counties ‘ [ Berkshire. Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire], in P.Forsaith and M.Wellings (eds), Methodism and History (Oxford 2010).
‘Civil War 1642-1649’; ‘Early Modern Shops and Shopkeepers’; ‘Agriculture 1750-1970’; ‘Labouring Lives’; ‘Education in the Nineteenth Century’; ‘Church and Chapel in 1851’; and (with Chris Gilliam) ‘Poor Relief 1834-1948’; in K.Tiller and G.Darkes (eds), An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire (2010, reprinted 2012).
‘ Local History and the Twentieth Century: an overview and suggested agenda’, in International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, Vol. 6 No.2 (2011).
‘Local History in England’ and ‘Local History in Ireland’ in C. Kammen and A .H. Wilson (eds), Encyclopaedia of Local History (Alta Mira Press, US, 2013)
Remembrance and Community: war memorials and local history (British Association for Local History, 2013)
‘Local History and the First World War’, in Past and Future, 15 (Institute of Historical Research, Spring/Summer 2014)
Ewelme School: a history and guide (Friends of Ewelme School, 2014)
‘Anniversaries, war and local history’, in History News, Winter 2015 (American Association of State and Local History)
Parsonages ( Bloomsbury Shire Publications, 2016).
‘Priests and people: changing relationships in south Oxfordshire, 1780-1920’ in People, Places and Context (Berkshire Local History Association, 2016)
‘Patterns of Dissent: The Social and Religious Geography of Nonconformity in Three Counties’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2018), pp. 4-31
‘How to read a chapel’, The Chapels Society Journal, 3 (2018), pp.3-23
[The First Christopher Stell Memorial Lecture]
‘Oxford Diocese, Bishop Wilberforce and the 1851 Religious Census’, Oxoniensia, Vol. 83 (2108), pp.101-108.
‘Local History and the First World War: the centenary experience’, The Local Historian, Vol. 49, No.2, pp.90-107.
English Local History: an introduction ( Revised and updated 3rd edition, 307pp.) Published by Boydell and Brewer, August 2020.
Reviews have been undertaken in 2018-21 for the following journals: History, International Journal of Regional and Local History, Family and Community History, Midland History and Landscape History.
Other activities
Kate Tiller chairs the Oxfordshire Record Society and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Regional and Local History and the Council of the Chapels Society. She is Project Director for the Family and Community History Research Society’s recent research project on Communities of Dissent, on which a conference (October 2021) and a publication (2022) are forthcoming.
She has served on the national advisory committee of the Victoria County History to 2018 and chaired the VCH Oxfordshire Trust, 2004-21. She was a trustee of the British Association for Local History 2013-16, and is their corresponding member with the American Association for State and Local History. She is a former editor of The Local Historian, and chaired the British Record Society 2016-18. She is a Patron of the Historic Chapels Trust and of Oxford Preservation Trust, an ambassador for the Almshouse Association, Hon. President of the Hook Norton Local History Group, and history advisor to the Aldeburgh and District Local History Society. Kate Tiller is a member of the Oxford History Faculty. A keen sports fan, in 2001 she became the first woman member of the committee of Oxford University Rugby Football Club, served as Chair 2017-18 and is now a Life Vice-president of the club.