Dr. James Campbell is an architect and architectural historian. He has practised as an architect in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and the United States. He and Frank Salmon together formed the MSt in Building History, a course in the Faculty run jointly with English Heritage.

Dr. Campbell is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and Chairman of the Construction History Society. He is Director of Studies and Fellow in both Architecture and History of Art in Queens’ College.

He has appeared on a number of television and radio programmes including Divine Designs (Channel 5), Modern Marvels (the History Channel), Making History (Radio 4), Ancient Megastructures (National Geographic Channel), the Today Programme (Radio 4), Robert Elms show (Radio London), The One Show (BBC 1) and Excess Baggage (Radio 4).

Research Interests

His research focuses on three areas: the development of building construction; 17th architecture (particularly Wren and Hawksmoor); and the history and development of libraries. His PhD looked at the work of Wren and seventeenth-century carpentry. His first book, Brick: a World History(2003), was featured as Guardian ‘book of the week’ and is available in eight languages. His book Building St Paul's(2007) provides an introduction to the key issues in seventeenth century architecture and building construction through a retelling of the story of the building of the cathedral. He has just completed a book on the history of libraries and editing a book on staircases which are both out in autumn 2013.