About the Institute

As a group of scholars working on the Reformation and related studies, we are fortunate to be located in St Andrews: the historic heart of Scotland’s Renaissance and Reformation. The University (founded in 1413) is the oldest in Scotland, and it was also, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a stage on which humanists and reformers acted out their parts in some of the great crises of European intellectual history.

John Knox preached his first Protestant sermon here, and Andrew Melville, his successor as the dominant Scottish ecclesiastical figure of his era, was principal of St Mary’s College. In the centuries since the Reformation St Andrews has cultivated a tradition of excellence in Reformation studies. The foundation of the Reformation Studies Institute in 1993 reflected the university’s commitment to enhancing St Andrews’ established reputation in this field of scholarship.

The Institute has a distinctly international flavour, partly through our students, and partly through our close relationships with similar institutions elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. It sponsors a graduate seminar, conferences and visits from distinguished external academics. The Institute also publishes St Andrews Studies in Reformation History

Reformation Day Lecture 2020
Bruce Gordon (Yale), ‘Boundaries of Memory: The Mediaeval Bible in the Early Modern World’.