Ian Bradley holds three degrees from the University of Oxford and has had a varied career in journalism at the London Times and BBC, church ministry as an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland, and academia. He worked as a lecturer and reader in church history and practical theology at the University of Aberdeen from 1992 to 1998, and reader in church history at the University of St Andrews from 1999 to 2017 when he was appointed Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History. From 2013 to 2017 he was Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews.