Inaugural Professorial Lecture –Professor Tim Cooper:

Why Richard Baxter Matters (to me)

About Professor Tim Cooper's research
Tim is a historian of seventeenth-century English religious and intellectual history with a particular focus on the Puritans, and two Puritans in particular: Richard Baxter (1615-91) and John Owen (1616-83). He has pioneered an approach to their intellectual history that emphasises real-world factors that shape ideas – factors such as personality, experience and geography. He has written one academic monograph on the way in which the English Civil War (1642-46) prompted Baxter to reinvent his doctrine of salvation, and another on the strained relationship between Baxter and Owen, the two most significant leaders within English Nonconformity. Tim is one of four co-editors of a new scholarly edition of the autobiography of Richard Baxter that was published by Oxford University Press in five volumes comprising three-thousand pages and 1.5 million words, and he is currently co-editing a volume of the letters of Richard Baxter, under contract to Oxford University Press.

This lecture will be followed with light refreshments, tea, coffee and juice.