Kenneth G. Appold

Kenneth G. Appold is the James Hastings Nichols Professor of Reformation History at Princeton Theological Seminary. Appold earned his BA, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Yale University, and his Dr.theol.habil. from the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. Prior to coming to Princeton, he served as a research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, and taught church history at the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. His areas of interest include the history and legacy of the Reformation, intellectual and cultural history of the early modern period, and the global history of Christianity. He teaches courses on the European Reformation, Church-State relations, early modern Christianity in Africa and East Asia, and “Faith and Fashion”–a religious history of clothing. Author of numerous books and articles on early modern Christianity, his most recent publications include The Cambridge History of Reformation-Era Theology (co-edited with Nelson H. Minnich; Cambridge 2024), and Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt of 1525 (2025, with Oxford University Press). He is currently writing a book on the religious significance of bells