Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Felipe Fernández-Armesto was an undergraduate at Oxford, where he was President of the Stubbs Society, and won a Demyship of Magdalen College, Senior Scholarships of Magdalen and St John´s Colleges, the Arnold Modern History Prizes, College prizes for History, Poetry, and Scripture Reading, and First-class Honours in the Final Honours School. He proceeded M.A. in 1976 and D.Phil. in 1977. His doctoral thesis was adopted for O.U.P.´s series of Oxford Historical Monographs and published in 1982. He was elected to a Fellowship of St Antony´s College, Oxford, in 1981 and to the Chair of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary College, University of London, in 2000. After occupying the Prince of Asturias Chair in Spanish Studies at Tufts University, he joined ND in January, 2009.

He has held distinguished many visiting appointments and has honorary doctorates or professorships from universities in Spain, Colombia, Uruguay, and Australia. Other awards include the Caird Medal, the John Carter Brown Gold Medal, the World History Association Book Prize, the IACP Prize and Spain´s National Prizes for Geographical research and for Gastronomy. In 2016 the King of Spain awarded him the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Alfonso el Sabio. His books have been translated in 29 languages. His journalism has appeared in most leading press and broadcasting outlets in Spain and the UK and has been widely syndicated in other countries, and he writes a monthly column for The Critic in England and frequent terceras for ABC in Spain. He wrote or co-wrote most of the screenplays for CNN´s series based on his book, Millennium. His most recent books are Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan (2022), which won a Mountbatten award and an award from History Reclaimed, (as editor) The Oxford History of the World (2024) and (with M. Lucena Giraldo), How the Spanish Empire Was Built (2025).