Dr Damian Kerney is Head of History and Sixth Form Enrichment at Lancing. He is Secretary of the S. Nicolas Guild and sings bass in the Chapel Choir. 

Damian was Head Chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral, a music scholar at Lancing, and a choral scholar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied History. He went on to study for a PhD in Medieval History at Sheffield University, exploring the eleventh and twelfth-century renaissance in French hermit life, which continues to be the focus of his research. Alongside his research he sang as a Cathedral Lay Clerk, performing and recording widely, including with English Voices and the Cambridge Consort of Voices. He also took time out to walk across Europe in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s great 1930s trek along the Rhine and Danube towards Constantinople. He then taught at Westcliff High School for Boys, before returning to Lancing to teach in 2004. 

Damian feels blessed to have been taught at Lancing by exceptional, generous-minded teachers who cherished individuality, lifted his eyes beyond the humdrum, and fired in him lifelong historical, intellectual and musical passions. He continues to be inspired by the College’s beauty and the quietly transformative power of the Chapel’s Anglo-Catholic tradition. He felt moved to be photographed against the College backdrop to so much of his childhood and working life. Above all, as a teacher he is dedicated to nurturing Lancing’s richly liberal educational tradition, from which he benefited so much. He seeks to foster independence of thought and imagination, transcending the constraints of the curriculum, from approaches to History to top level university entrance. In this light, the Lower Sixth Heresy Project, encouraging year-in-year-out feisty, well-researched essays challenging over-dominant intellectual orthodoxies is something to which he is deeply committed.