Dr Stephen Mileson

 

Head of Programmes in Lifelong Learning (Humanities)

Departmental Lecturer in Lifelong Learning (Local History and Archaeology)

Biography

Dr Stephen Mileson completed his D.Phil. in medieval history at the University of Oxford. Before coming to the Department, he was a College Lecturer at St Edmund Hall and a Research Fellow in the History Faculty. At OUDCE, Stephen is Head of Programmes (Humanities) and a Departmental Lecturer in Local History and Archaeology. He is also a contributor to the Oxfordshire Victoria County History and serves as the editor of the county history and archaeology journal Oxoniensia. Stephen is dedicated to widening participation in history and archaeology and has worked extensively with local groups on fieldwork projects, as well as sharing his research through podcasts, radio shows, and popular publications.

Teaching

Stephen teaches a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate history and archaeology courses, with a focus on the Middle Ages and landscape studies. He previously directed the Diploma in English Social and Local History and the Diploma/Advanced Diploma in British Archaeology. Over the years, he has greatly enjoyed teaching short courses for the Oxford Experience summer school at Christ Church. Stephen is eager to hear from postgraduate research students working on medieval social and landscape history.

Research interests

Stephen's research focuses on the intersection of social, political and landscape history. He is currently working on two related projects: the social consequences in England of the environmental crisis of the 1430s, and perceptions of forests and forest communities in later medieval Europe. Both projects feed into a larger comparative study of local societies and arenas of political participation in Europe and the Mediterranean c.1300-1530. His earlier research on perceptions of landscape in South Oxfordshire over the long period of 500-1650 was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and resulted in a major monograph published by OUP in 2021, a Past and Present article on ‘Openness and Closure in the Later-Medieval Village’ (2017), and a chapter on ‘Sound and Landscape’ in the Oxford Handbook of Later Medieval Archaeology (2018). Stephen’s first book Parks in Medieval England examined park creation and the regulation of hunting as a way of understanding conflicts over practices, space and resources which involved not only kings and aristocrats but also peasants and townspeople (OUP, 2009).

Selected publications

Books

Peasant Perceptions of Landscape: Ewelme Hundred, South Oxfordshire, 500-1650, with S. Brookes (OUP, 2021), shortlisted for the Current Archaeology Research Project of the Year, 2022

The Archaeology of Oxford in the 21st Century (Boydell & Brewer, 2020), edited with Anne Dodd and Leo Webley

Parks in Medieval England (OUP, 2009; paperback 2014)

Articles/book chapters

‘Country Politics in Later Medieval England’ (forthcoming, 2025/6)

‘Finding Freedom in the Thirteenth-Century English Countryside’, in R. Purkiss and H. Boston (eds.), Landscapes and Producers in Medieval England: Essays Presented to Rosamond Faith (in press, 2025)

‘Boundaries, Landscape, and Population’, ‘Communications’, ‘Development of the Town’, ‘Secular Town Buildings’, ‘Education’, ‘Hook Norton’, and ‘Swerford and Showell’, in S. Townley (ed.), VCH Oxfordshire XXI: Chipping Norton and Area (2024), pp. 25-62, 146-52, 185-225, 334-59

‘Restoring Mapledurham: A South Oxfordshire Estate and Its Buildings, 1960-2019’, with D. Miles, Oxoniensia, 87 (2022), pp. 105-26

‘Caversham’, ‘Eye and Dunsden’, ‘Mapledurham’, and ‘Shiplake’, in S. Townley (ed.), VCH Oxfordshire XX: The South Oxfordshire Chilterns (2022), pp. 23-74, 148-74, 269-302, 384-412

‘Living Like Common People: Uncovering Medieval Peasant Perceptions of Landscape’, Current Archaeology, 381 (2021), pp. 26-33

‘Royal and Aristocratic Landscapes of Pleasure’, in C. Gerrard and A. Gutiérrez (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Later Medieval Archaeology in Britain, OUP (2018), pp. 386-400

‘Sound and Landscape’, in Gerrard and Gutiérrez, The Oxford Handbook of Later Medieval Archaeology, pp. 713-27

‘Openness and Closure in the Later Medieval Village’, Past and Present, 234 (Feb. 2017), pp. 3-37

 ‘Beyond the Dots: Mapping Meaning in the Later Medieval Landscape’, in M. Hicks (ed.), The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem: Mapping the Medieval Countryside and Rural Society (2016), pp. 84-99

‘Cuxham’, ‘Easington’, and ‘Warborough’, in S. Townley (ed.), VCH Oxfordshire XVIII: Benson, Ewelme, and the Chilterns (2016), pp. 158-91, 393-421

‘People and Houses in South Oxfordshire, 1300-1650’, Vernacular Architecture, 46 (2015), pp. 8-25

‘A Multi-Phase Anglo-Saxon Site in Ewelme’, Oxoniensia, 79 (2014), pp. 1-29, with S. Brookes

‘Henley and the Chilterns’, ‘Outlying Settlement’, ‘Outlying Farms and Agriculture’, ‘Bix’, and ‘Harpsden’, in S. Townley (ed.), VCH Oxfordshire XVI: Henley-on-Thames and Environs (2011), pp. 1-18, 183-5, 189-265