Sarah Foot

Sarah Rosamund Irvine Foot, FRHistS, FSA (born 1961) is a British early medieval historian and academic. She is the current Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford.

The daughter of the military historian M. R. D. Foot, Sarah Foot was educated until 1979 at Withington Girls' School in Manchester. She then went up to Newnham College, Cambridge to study at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, where she was taught by, amongst others, Rosamond McKitterick and Simon Keynes. She gained her doctorate in 1990.

Foot was, from 1989 to 1990, research fellow at Gonville and Caius College before becoming a fellow and tutor there. In 1993 she took up a lectureship at the University of Sheffield where subsequently, in 2001, she was made senior lecturer. In 2004, she was appointed to the newly established chair of Early Medieval History.

On 22 February 2007 Queen Elizabeth II appointed Foot to the Regius Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford. She is the first woman ever to hold this chair. Postholders are expected to lead research and develop graduate studies within their areas of specialisation, and to take a leading part in developing the work of the Oxford Theology Faculty. The professorship is also annexed to a canonry at Christ Church, although the postholder need only be a lay Church member; and at a special ceremony on 6 October 2007 Foot was installed as Residentiary Canon of the Cathedral.

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