Then a temporary post replacing Chris Day as course director of the Diploma in English Local History came up, Diana stepped in, and one year eventually stretched into six.' At first she protested that she was 'not a local historian', but within a very short time she found that this new approach was close to her own interests and she settled happily into teaching weekly classes around Oxfordshire. 'In 1998 Diana became a history tutor for OUDCE. Her textbook on Medieval Economic Thought was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002.' She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and from 1985 to 1999 she edited and contributed to many volumes of Studies in Church History, the conference proceedings of the Ecclesiastical History Society. 'An academic post at the University of East Anglia followed, although Diana had already moved to Oxford and was determined to stay in spite of the lengthy commute between Headington and Norwich for which she liked to claim improbable new speed records. She was an adult student at Birkbeck College in London for a BA and then a PhD which was published as Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge University Press, 1989).' 'Diana's first employment after leaving school was in publishing, and this early editorial experience was put to good use throughout her later career. Dr Adrienne Rosen, Lecturer in Local and Social History, remembers her.

She was a distinguished scholar and teacher of medieval history and will be remembered by many OUDCE local history students. Dr Diana Wood, formerly Departmental Lecturer in Local History and course director of the Undergraduate Diploma in English Local History, died suddenly in July 2012 aged 71.

Medieval Economic Thought by Diana Wood