About Peter

Peter Foden read History and Anglo-saxon, Norse and Celtic at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 1982 to 1986, and then trained as an Archivist at Liverpool University. He has been archivist or records manager to a wide range of organizations from business to educational (and one - the Oxford University Press - that is chimerically both of the above!). Alongside his archive career he became involved in what used to be called Adult Education, teaching for Rewley House, University of Oxford, and at the Keele University Mediaeval Latin Summer Schools. Courses taught have included:

• Sources for the Great Rebuilding (17th and 18th century vernacular architecture)
• Land, Law and Language (understanding mediaeval deeds and other documentary sources for landscape history)
• Sources for mediaeval building 
• Mediaeval accounting, manorial and estate records
• Mediaeval palaeography 
• Handwriting in England 1550-1750 (Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester, 2006 & 2007)
• The History of the Family 1200-1900 (University of Nottingham, 2006) 

At Oxford Peter also developed the OUP Museum and so deepened his interests in books and printing; at that time he did some writing for John Randle's unique Whittington Press, learned to handset type, and was able to assist a procession of biographers using the Press archive, including his late colleague Jenny McMorris who just lived to see publication of her The Warden of English: The life of H. W. Fowler in 2001.  

• Archivist, Shropshire Record Office, 1987-89
• Archivist, The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn (Project), 1989-90
• Archivist, Oxford University Press, 1990-1997
• City Archivist, Stoke on Trent, 1997-1998
• Records Manager, The Boots Company PLC, 1998-2001
• Peter Foden Consultancy Limited, since 2003 (Go back to Ancestrography page to find out the range of services available).

Recent projects have included the implementation of Freedom of Information for the University of Nottingham and a survey of Nottinghamshire archives relating to slavery and its abolition. Peter is currently developing a specialism of investigating the English origins of early American colonists.

If you'd like Peter's help
with your project, click here to start discussing scope, objectives and budget.

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