James Belich, ONZM, is a New Zealand and global historian who held the Beit Chair of Global and Imperial History at Oxford University between 2011 and 2024, where he was also a co-founder and director of the Oxford Centre for Global History. He spent his earlier career teaching history at Wellington and Auckland Universities. His books include a two-volume history of New Zealand, Making Peoples (Allen Lane1996) and Paradise Reforged (2001), and The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Penguin 1988), which was later made into a television documentary series (NZTV One,1998). More recent publications include Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-world, 1783 -1939 (Oxford, 2009) and The World the Plague Made. The Black Death and the Rise of Europe (Princeton, 2022), which was a finalist for the Wolfson History Prize in 2024. He was a doctoral student at Nuffield and is a former Associate Member of the college.