Professor Jackie Eales is President (2011-14) of the Historical Association, the major national organisation representing the case for an historical education to policy makers and ministers. She is a member of the History Forum of the Higher Education Academy and is Professor of Early Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University, where she is the Director of Research for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

She was the recipient of a National Award for History Teaching in Higher Education from the Higher Education Academy History Subject Centre in 2006. She studied history at London University and wrote her PhD under the supervision of Professor Conrad Russell, the Liberal-Democrat Peer. She is an expert on the English Civil Wars, Tudor and Stuart Women and 17th Century Puritanism. She was a keynote speaker at the ‘Teaching Difficult Histories’ Conference at Cumberland Lodge in March 2013.