Announcing Professor Helen King, Modern Church President

Modern Church is delighted to announce that Professor Helen King has been appointed as its new President.  Helen King is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University, a distinguished historian of ancient medicine, public intellectual and active lay person in the Church of England.

Trained in Ancient History and Social Anthropology at University College London, where she also completed her doctorate, Helen’s academic work is highly distinguished and widely credited with having helped to reshape contemporary understandings of the body, gender and medical knowledge in classical antiquity and its afterlives. Her work spans Greek medical texts, the cultural history of gynaecology and obstetrics and the long reception of ancient medical ideas from the early modern period to the present. She is particularly known for her analysis of how women’s bodies have been conceptualised, represented and regulated through history, for demonstrating the enduring influence of classical philosophy in shaping Western medical thought, and for exploring how religion and medicine have worked together to support the status quo.

Her most recent book, Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women’s Bodies (2024), synthesises decades of research to trace the cultural construction of the female body from antiquity to modern biomedical discourse. The book was widely reviewed, with Helen featuring on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and also on an episode of Start the Week. It was also the subject of a Modern Church online panel session in November 2025. She has made a number of podcasts, including appearing on several episodes of Betwixt the Sheets (BBC Sounds) with Kate Lister. At the beginning of 2025 she also became a judge for the Wolfson History Prize.

Helen served on the Church of England General Synod as an elected member of the House of Laity in 2021-25. She contributed to the historical section of the Church of England’s document on human sexuality, Living in Love and Faith (2020) – the topic of another Modern Church webinar in January 2023. She is a former trustee of Women and the Church (WATCH) and a current trustee of Together for the Church of England and of Westcott House Theological College. At her home church she is an authorised lay preacher, server and intercessor, as well as volunteering for many years as a Street Pastor, and as a Chapel Homilist at Corpus Christi College.

Helen’s academic reputation, particularly her ground-breaking work at the intersection of gender studies, medical humanities, classics, and religion, as well as her prominence as an active layperson in the Church of England — often involving advocacy of many of the causes with which Modern Church members identify — make her uniquely qualified to be the next President of Modern Church.