Our People

Prof Malcolm Airs OBE

Emerita/Emeritus Fellow, Fellow

MA DPhil (Oxon), FSA, IHBC, FRHistSoc, OBE

Malcolm Airs joined the College in 1991 when he took up the post of lecturer in Conservation and Historic Environment with the Department for Continuing Education.  Previously he had worked in local government as an historian with the Greater London Council and then as Conservation Officer with South Oxfordshire District Council.  He was appointed to develop a joint Masters course in Historic Conservation with Oxford Brookes University and this has now been established as one of the leading courses in this field in the United Kingdom.  In addition he taught a post-graduate Certificate in Architectural History and directed a full programme of architectural history and conservation day and weekend schools and weekly classes.  He retired from the Department in 2006. He was Vice-President of the College from 2006 to 2008 and supervised the building works which established the College on its Norham Manor site. From 2008 to 2012 he was Director of the Kellogg Centre for the Historic Environment.

He is a past President of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society. He has served as a Commissioner of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and on the advisory committees of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. He has been a member of both the Council and the Architecture Panel of the National trust. He is currently a Trustee of the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust and the Herbert Lane Trust, and Vice-President of the Oxford Preservation Trust.

Professor Airs was awarded an OBE for services to the historic environment, conservation and education, in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

He has published extensively on architectural history and historic conservation. His most recent book is Architectural History After Colvin (Stamford, 2013).