Francis Young is a UK-based historian, folklorist, indexer, and translator. He specialises in the history of religion and belief from ancient times to the present day, provides expert indexes for academic books and translates medieval and early modern Latin.

Francis holds a PhD from Cambridge University and is the author, editor or co-author of over 20 books, including the award-winning Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic, and is well-known as an authority on the religious history of Britain and the Baltic region. He co-edits the book series Elements in Folklore for Cambridge University Press.

Francis was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk and studied Philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and Classics at University of Wales, Lampeter before receiving his doctorate in History from Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was Volumes Editor for the Catholic Record Society between 2015 and 2017. He spent several years as Head of Sixth Form at an English cathedral school and was appointed a Senior Research Associate at the University of Portsmouth in 2024. He teaches for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and regularly appears on BBC radio as well as writing for numerous magazines such as History Today, First Things, The Spectator and BBC History Magazine.

Francis is a lay Reader in the Church of England and an honorary life member of the Churches Conservation Trust. Three of his books have previously been shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award by the Folklore Society. In 2023 his work on the religious history of Suffolk was recognised when he was made a lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He is a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and writes for Dorling Kindersley, as well as contributing to numerous textbooks and anthologies.

Francis is a member of the Society of Indexers, the Society of Authors, the Folklore Society, the Prayer Book Society, the Society for Neo-Latin Studies and the Suffolk Records Society (among others). He is the Secretary of the British-Lithuanian Society and editor of its magazine, Tiltas.

This site features updates on Francis’s publications, speaking engagements and occasional reviews and other articles.