Roger Schofield, 1937-2019

The Faculty is saddened to learn of the death last night of Dr Roger Schofield, Emeritus Director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and Fellow of Clare College.

Dr Alice Reid, acting Director of the Group, writes:

‘Roger was born in 1937 and received both undergraduate and PhD degrees in history from the University of Cambridge. In 1966 he was appointed as Research Assistant at the Group - which was then only two years old itself. He quickly began to play a major role in corresponding with and encouraging 'le secret weapon anglais': the small army of amateur local historians who collected and counted baptisms, burials and marriages from parish registers around the country in an early crowd sourcing exercise. He played a major role in the analyses of these data, offering important and novel interpretations of the course of British population history published in numerous journal articles and books. He was Director of the Cambridge Group from 1974 to 1994, and played a significant role in British and international historical demography: among other roles he was President of the British Society of Population Studies, 1985-87, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1988. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge since 1969.

He was a key member of the Group in all sorts of ways: in its ground-breaking work, its direction, and its collegiate and enabling atmosphere. Those of us who knew him will miss him greatly, and we all have much to thank him for.'