Simon Richard Ditchfield FRHistS is a British academic historian of early modern Italy.
Ditchfield completed his undergraduate studies at the University of York, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1980.
He then received Master of Philosophy (1987) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees from the Warburg Institute; his PhD was awarded in 1991 for his thesis Hagiography and Ecclesiastical Historiography in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Italy: Pietro Maria Campi of Piacenza (1569–1649).
[1][2][3] He returned to the University of York in 1991 as a British Academy post-doctoral fellow, and has remained there ever since; after completing his fellowship, he was appointed a temporary lecturer in 1994, and then from 1996 to 1999 he was a project director in the department of the Heritage studies as applied history project ; he was then appointed to a full lectureship (1998), and was promoted to a senior lectureship in 2002, a readership in 2006, and to a professorship in 2014.
[1][3] Ditchfield's research focuses on urban and religious culture in Italy from around 1300 to around 1800.