"I am interested in people and their motives—why they think and act the way they do. What makes someone a radical? Or a conservative? I focus on the nineteenth century because so much of what happened then has shaped the things we enjoy—and the things we complain about—today, especially in Great Britain."
Dr. Michael J. Turner’s research and teaching have focused on political, social, and religious movements in nineteenth-century Britain. His most recent book was a study of Church politics in the mid-Victorian period.
Dr. Turner lives in Boone, North Carolina, with his wife Catherine and Geordie the dog. Hobbies include reading, movies, rural hikes, and soccer. The Turners attend Alliance Bible Fellowship in Boone.
Education
BA, MA, University of Oxford
MA, University of Rochester, NY
D.Phil., University of Oxford
Areas of Study
Modern British politics and foreign policy; the history of the Church of England; Victorian society.
Selected Courses
HIS 3142 Britain since 1688
HIS 4100 Britain's Age of Reform, 1760-1846
HIS 3148 The Making of British Democracy: Party and Politics, 1865-1951
HIS 3149 Britain's "REEL" History: Monarchy and People on Film
HIS 3532 Britain and the Great Powers, 1880s-1980s
HIS 5106 Victorian Britain: social and political discourse in the mid-19th century
HIS 5107 Research in British History
HIS 5106 Europe since 1715: A Political and Social History
Selected Publications, Papers, and Positions
The Church of England and Victorian Oxford (2023)
Church Politics in Mid-Victorian Britain (2025)
“Defending ‘the principle of representation’: Andrew Bisset, Victorian Ideas, and the History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England,” Journal of Victorian Culture 20 (2015): 531-48.
“British Sympathy for the South during the American Civil War and Reconstruction: A Religious Perspective,” Church History and Religious Culture 97 (2017): 195-219.
“‘Maintain the old institutions in their old quiet way’: Beresford Hope and the Religious and Political Dimensions of University Reform in Victorian Britain,” History of Universities 31 (2018): 143-86.
“Beresford Hope, the Church, and the politics of post-elementary education in Victorian Britain,” Anglican and Episcopal History 88 (2019): 1-29.
“The Church of England and the Elementary Education Act of 1870,” Journal of Anglican Studies 17 (2019): 198-217.
“‘Our Brethren’: A British Version of Southern Separatist Ideology during the American Civil War,” Britain and the World 13 (2020): 47-68.
“Victorian Ecclesiologists and the Restoration of Etchingham Church,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 160 (2023): 209-26.
Visiting Research Fellow, University of Oxford, 2019-20. Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Member of the Institute of Historical Research, the Southern Conference on British Studies, and Phi Alpha Theta.
Organizer/Convener, Annual Appalachian Lecture in British History and Rhinehart Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Title: Roy Carroll Distinguished Professor of British History
Department: Department of History
Email address: Email me
Phone: (828) 262-8102
Fax: (828) 262-4976