Professor France works on the history of warfare and crusading. His work has been funded by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Lawrence of Arabia Trust. He has undertaken field work in Italy, France, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon.

Professor France is Director of the Callaghan Centre for Conflict Studies.

Current research

Professor France is currently working on a study entitled Perilous Glory: Understanding the History of Western Warfare. During the academic year 2008-2009, this research will be supported by a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship.

Principal publications

Books

• The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000-1714 (London: Routledge, 2005) 
• Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (London: UCL Press, 1999)
• Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
• (with N. Bulst & P. Reynolds), The Five Books of the Histories and the Life of St. William (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) 

Book-chapters and journal articles

• 'Fortifications East and West', in H. Kennedy, ed., Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria from the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 281-294
• 'Two Types of Vision on the First Crusade: Stephen of Valence and Peter Bartholomew', Crusades, 5 (2006), 1-20
• 'Logistics and the Second Crusade', in J.H.Pryor, ed., Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 77-94
• 'Thinking about Crusader Strategy', in N. Christie, ed., Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities: Warfare in the Middle-Ages, 378-1492 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 75-96
• 'The importance of the Bayeux Tapestry for the History of War', in P.Bouet, B.Levy and F.Neveux, eds., The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2004), 289-300
• 'Holy War and Holy Men: Erdmann and the Lives of the Saints ', in N. Housley & M. Bull, eds., The Experience of Crusading, Vol. I: Western Approaches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 193-208
• 'Property, Warfare and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century', Journal of the Haskins Society, 11 (1998) (appeared 2003), 73-85
• 'The Composition and Raising of the Armies of Charlemagne', Journal of Medieval Military History, 1 (2002), 61-82  

Principal research awards, fellowships, and prizes

• Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2008-2009)
• Leverhulme Fellow (1999-2000)