Stephen Thompson read History at Trinity College, Cambridge and stayed there for an MPhil in Economic and Social History, followed by a PhD in History.  He was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge in 2009 and has been a member of both the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and the Centre for History and Economics since 2005.

Stephen’s teaching and research interests span the political, economic, social and intellectual history of Britain during the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c. 1660-1832).  His published research includes a study of the political economy of eighteenth-century parliamentary enclosure, as well as a revisionist account of the making of the 1832 Reform Act.  His work on the origins of British census-taking – which was the focus of his PhD thesis – received local, national and international media coverage at the time of the 2011 UK census.    Stephen was awarded the Ellen McArthur Prize in Economic History in 2011.