- Professor of Modern History, University of Leeds (from 2011)
 
	- Birkbeck Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History, University of Cambridge (from 2013 to 2014)
 
	- Reader in Modern British History, University of Leeds (from 2004 to 2011)
 
	- Extraordinary Research Fellow, All Souls College (from 1997 to 2021)
 
	- Visiting Professor of History and the Social Sciences, the University of Chicago (from 1991 to 1992)
 
	- Fifty-Pound Fellow, All Souls College (from 1990 to 1997)
 
	- Prize Fellow, All Souls College (from 1982 to 1989)
 
	- Research Student, Nuffield College, Oxford (from 1981 to 1982)
 
	- Scholar in Modern History, Balliol College, Oxford (from 1978 to 1981)
 
 
           
       
       
          
            
          
          
              
	- Religion and the secularisation question in Britain since c. 1850
 
	- The history of All Souls College, Oxford, since 1660
 
	- Modern political thought
 
 
           
       
       
          
            
          
          
              
	- (ed. with Peregrine Horden), All Souls and the Wider World: Statesmen, Scholars and Adventurers, c. 1850-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
 
	- The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c. 1920-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010; paperback and e-book editions, 2012).
 
	- (ed. with Robert Crowcroft and Richard Whiting), The Philosophy, Politics and Religion of British Democracy: Maurice Cowling and Conservatism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010).
 
	- (ed.) All Souls under the Ancien Regime: Politics, Learning and the Arts, c. 1600-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
 
	- (ed. with Richard Whiting) The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; paperback edition, 2002).
 
	- Religion in the Age of Decline: Organisation and Experience in Industrial Yorkshire, c. 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; paperback edition, 2002).
 
	- Link to publications
 
 
           
       
       
          
            
          
          
              
	- Co-editor (with G.C.F. Forster) of Northern History (from 1997)
 
	- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
 
	- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
 
 
           
       
       
          
            
          
          
              
	- The social history of religion
 
	- Intellectual history
 
	- The history of the universities
 
 
           
       
       
          
            
          
          
              
	- British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow (from 2011 to 2012).