Erasmus Forum
Hywel Williams
Director
Hywel Williams is a historian, commentator, and broadcaster. His books include The Age of Chivalry: Culture and Power in Medieval Europe 950-1450; Emperor of the West: Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire; Sun Kings: A History of Kingship; Cassell’s Chronology of World History: Dates, Events and Ideas that Made History; Days that Changed the World; Guilty Men: Conservative Decline and Fall; Britain's Power Elites, In Our Time: A History of Oratory, and The Seven Ages of Britain.
His television credits, as writer and presenter, include documentaries on David Lloyd George, Pope Benedict XV, contemporary architecture, Britain's coal industry, a six-part international history of the late 20th century, 'Promised Land'- a social and economic history of post 1945 Wales, and 'How Empires Fall', a six part series on the decline of the Roman, British, Dutch, Spanish, French and Ottoman empires.
Fergus Butler Gallie
Senior Research Associate
Fergus Butler Gallie is an author, editor and lecturer. His books include A Field Guide to the English Clergy and Priests de la Resistance. He has been published in newspapers and magazines in Britain and the United States as a reviewer and commentator. His academic background is in Church History and his published work is on the Hussites and Early Modern Bohemia. He is a member of the Senior Common Rooms of St John's College and Keble College in Oxford and has lectured on History, Philosophy and Theology, focussing in particular on the interplay between Christianity and humour, across the UK and abroad.
Research Associate
Alexander Baxter
Alex Baxter is currently undertaking the Bar Vocational Course at City, University of London, for which he holds an Inner Temple Exhibition Scholarship. Alongside his studies, he lectures in Land Law as a Visiting Lecturer and writes a satirical blog on Substack.
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He read Human, Social and Political Sciences at Magdalene College, Cambridge, specialising in twentieth-century political philosophy of difference and communitarianism, before completing an MPhil on Early Modern Calvinist engagement with Hebraic sources as a Cambridge Trust Scholar.
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He is presently working on a research project on Hugo Grotius for the Erasmus Forum.
Amelia Butler Gallie
Research Associate
Amelia Butler-Gallie is a freelance writer with an interest in literature, architecture, and culture. She has written for The Times, The Spectator, The Critic, The Oldie, and The Spectator World. She read English at Oxford, and then completed a Master’s in 18th century and early 19th century literature.
Matthew Thal
Research Associate
Matthew Thal is presently a trainee solicitor at Slaughter and May. Prior to this he taught Latin and Classical Greek at Henrietta Barnett School and King Edward's School Birmingham. Matthew studied Classics at Peterhouse, Cambridge before completing an MPhil in Byzantine history. He has written book and exhibition reviews as well as lecturing to school age audiences on Cicero, Plato, Greek tragedy and Classical art.