Prize Fellow and British Academy post-doctoral research fellow, Magdalen College Oxford, 1985-1992

Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of History, University of Central Lancashire, 1993-2000

Professor of Rural History, University of Reading, 2000-14; Director of the Rural History Centre, 2000-2003

Professor of Local and Regional History, Institute of Historical Research and Director of the Victoria County History, 2014-16

Visiting Professor of Economic History, University of Reading, 2014 to date

Honours and positions:
T. S. Ashton Prize of the Economic History Society, 1991
British Academy Research Reader, 2004-06
Fellow of the Academy of Social Science, 2006
President of the European Rural History Organization, EURHO, 2010-15

Editor, Agricultural History Review, 1998-2019

Currently:
Chair and General Editor, Victoria County History Shropshire;
Acting Secretary of the British Agricultural History Society;
Chair of the List and Index Society;
and General Editor, Boydell Studies in Rural History.