Miles Taylor

Miles Taylor, FRHistS (born 19 September 1961) is a historian of 19th-century Britain, and an academic administrator. Since 2004, he has been a Professor of History at the University of York and between 2008 and 2014 he was Director of the University of London's Institute of Historical Research.

Miles Taylor was born in Buckinghamshire on 19 September 1961, the son of Geoffrey Peter Taylor and his wife Dorothy Pearl, née Weaver. After leaving Tapton School in Sheffield, he went to Queen Mary College in London to read history and politics, graduating with a first-class bachelor of arts degree (BA) in 1983. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University and then completed a doctor of philosophy degree (PhD) at St John's College, Cambridge in 1989.

Between 1988 and 1991, Taylor was a Research Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge; he then moved over to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was appointed a fellow. He subsequently lectured in history at King's College London (1995–2001), before being appointed Professor in Modern British History at the University of Southampton. In 2004, he moved to the University of York as Professor of Modern History and between 2008 and 2014, he was a Professor of History and Director of the Institute of Historical Research.

In 1997, Taylor was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. As of 2017, he sits on the Research Advisory Committee of the National Portrait Gallery and the Editorial Advisory Committees of the History of Parliament Trust, the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, the Journal of British Studies and the BBC History Magazine.

Taylor's research focuses on 19th-century British history, especially radical politics and Chartism, the history of parliament in this period, the interaction between Empire and the political system and the historiography of Victorian politics and culture.