Peter Jackson read History at St. John's College, Cambridge, and obtained his BA in 1971 and his PhD in 1977. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, 1975-1979, he was appointed Lecturer in History at Keele University, retiring as Professor of Medieval History in 2011. He has published on the Crusades, on the Mongol empire and on its relations with Christian Western Europe, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012.