A specialist legal history and early modern English history, Wilfrid Prest was educated at the University of Melbourne (BA Hons.), and the University of Oxford (DPhil, Modern History). He is currently Emeritus Professor and Visiting Research Fellow in History and in Law at the University of Adelaide, where he taught from 1966 until his retirement. Prest is also a Fellow of Queen's College, University of Melbourne, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Royal Historical Society (UK), and a member of the Council of the Selden Society.