Beverley Southgate MSc, PhD

Beverley Southgate has been associated with the University of Chichester since 2000 and a Visiting Fellow since 2004. After graduating from Oxford with a degree in Literae Humaniores, he studied part-time for an MSc and PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at University College London. His research focused on a largely overlooked seventeenth-century English Catholic priest, Thomas White, whose interests embraced not only theology but also natural philosophy and political theory, and whose career and reputation provoked historiographical questions relating to the role (and definition) of ‘minor’ figures as well as to such categorisations as ‘Ancient’ and ‘Modern’.

For many years, Dr Southgate taught History of Ideas at the University of Hertfordshire, where he was Reader in History. He also taught part-time for the Open University, and was a panel member and specialist adviser for the CNAA. In addition to a biography of Thomas White (1993), he has published numerous essays on seventeenth-century intellectual history; and he has more recently turned his attention to historical theory, in which his publications include History: What and Why? (1996; revised edition 2001); Why Bother with History? (2000); Postmodernism in History (2003); and What is History For? (2005). Current interest and writing is focused on fiction and historical theory, and the relationship of contentment and aspiration.