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Professor Lyndal Roper

Professor Lyndal Roper

Emeritus Regius Professor of History

Oriel College

lyndal.roper@history.ox.ac.uk My undergraduate degree was in History with Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and from there I went to study in Germany at the University of Tübingen before moving to the University of London (King's College) where I completed my doctorate. I worked at Royal Holloway, University of London and then moved to Balliol College, Oxford, where I was Fellow and Tutor in History. I'm now at Oriel College. I was the first woman to hold the Regius Chair in History, and the first Australian. Recently I’ve published Summer of Fire and Blood, a history of the German Peasants’ War (1524-6), the greatest uprising in western Europe before the French Revolution (Winner, Cundill Prize 2025). I've also written a biography of the reformer Martin Luther (2016) and, on Luther's cultural legacy, Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther's World and Legacy (2021). Previously I've written on gender and the German Reformation and on witchcraft.

I'm a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a Fellow of the Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften. I'm a former Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and a former Humboldt Fellow. I hold Honorary Doctorates from the University of Melbourne and the University of Basel.

Research Interests

I’ve always been interested in the history of gender, women and sexualities. Now through working on the German Peasants’ War (1524-6) I’ve become fascinated by landscape and memory. We have a lively group of postgraduate and early career historians working on cultural and social history themes in early modern Europe and we join with our counterparts in Berlin.

I’m also interested in the relationship between physical exercise and intellectual creativity and I run ‘Moving History’ workshops for graduate historians.

Publications

Cover of Summer of Fire and Blood
Featured Publication

Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War

(Basic Books, 2025)

The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two months.

DPhil Students

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding anything relating to early modern German history, 1500-1750.

Maayan (Maaian) Aner

DPhil Student

Louisa Bergold

DPhil Student

Niklas Groschinski

DPhil Student

Ryan Hampton

DPhil Student

Laura Roberts

DPhil Student

Ellen Sharman

DPhil Student

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