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 Oxford Lifelong Learning, 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. In addition, he is a member of the editorial board of The Fifteenth Century. 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.
Dr Stephen Mileson
Head of Programmes (Humanities)
Departmental Lecturer in Local History and Archaeology
Stephen teaches a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate history and archaeology courses, with a focus on the Middle Ages and landscape studies. His emphasis is on research-led teaching and creating a supportive and interactive learning environment with an emphasis on discussion and collaborative group work. He previously directed the MSc in Applied Landscape Archaeology, 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 history and landscape archaeology.
Stephen’s research focuses on the intersection of social, political and landscape history. He is currently working on the socio-political consequences in England of the environmental crisis of the second quarter of the fifteenth century. This project feeds into a larger comparative study of local societies and arenas of political participation in Europe c.1300-1530. A second current project combines archaeology and legal history to explain the origin of modern-day villages in twelfth-century developments which included the widespread adoption of wheeled vehicles and closer definition and protection of the king’s highway. His earlier research on perceptions of landscape in South Oxfordshire over the long period 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).
Stephen is co-convenor of Oxford Lifelong Learning’s Medieval Society and Landscape Seminar held during Trinity term at Rewley House and online.
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)
- ‘Enstone’ and ‘Spelsbury’, in S. Townley (ed.), VCH Oxfordshire XXII (in press)
- ‘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 (2025), pp. 177-88
- ‘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
- ‘The “Lost” Church of Bix Gibwyn’, Oxoniensia, 76 (2011), pp. 15-37, with D. Nicholls
