Academic Staff
University College London
Valentina Arena
Valentina Arena is Lecturer in Ancient History at University
College London. She works in the area of classical Roman history,
especially exploring the relationship between political ideas and
political action in the Roman Republic. She has previously published
on aspects of ancient political thought, including Cicero, and is
currently at work on turning her 2003 doctoral thesis into a book.
Richard Bourke
Richard Bourke is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary
University of London. He has previously been a John Carter Brown
Library Associates Fellow (2004) and a Humboldt Fellow (2006–2007)
at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. His research
interests include enlightenment political thought, ancient political
thought, Northern Ireland and comparative politics, and contemporary
political theory. Amongst his areas of thematic interest are the
history and theory of democracy, the causes of political conflict,
and the idea and practice of imperialism. He has published on Romanticism,
the thought of Edmund Burke, ancient political ideas and contemporary
politics. His most recent book is Peace in Ireland: The War
of Ideas (Random House: 2003).
Justin Champion
Justin Champion is Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas
in the History Department at Royal Holloway, University of London.
He is interested in the work of such key intellectual figures as
Pierre Bayle, John Toland, Baruch Spinoza, Matthew Tindal and Thomas
Hobbes, and his research covers such areas as blasphemy and irreligion
in early modern Europe, biblical criticism, republicanism and radical
thought in the early enlightenment. His publications include The
Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies,
1660–1730 (Cambridge University Press: 1992) and Republican
Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, c1696-1722
(Manchester University Press: 2003), and an edition of John Toland's
Nazarenus 1718 (The Voltaire Foundation: 1999). He is currently
editing (with Mark Goldie) a volume of Hobbes’ writings on
religion for the Clarendon edition.
Gregory Claeys
Gregory Claeys is Professor of the History of Political Thought
in the History Department at Royal Holloway, University of London.
He has previously held teaching and research positions at Cambridge
University and in Germany. His research interests include the history
of radicalism and socialism in nineteenth-century Britain, utopianism
1700-2001, Social Darwinism and Eugenics, and British intellectual
history from 1750 to the present. His main publications include
Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British
Socialism (Cambridge University Press: 1989), Thomas Paine: Social
and Political Thought (Unwin Hyman: 1989) and Machinery, Money and
the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–1860
(Princeton University Press: 1987). He has also edited Utopias of
the British Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press: 1994) and
The Owenite Socialist Movement: Pamphlets and Correspondence (2006),
10 vols.
Serena Ferente
Serena Ferente is Lecturer in Late Medieval History at King’s
College London, having been a graduate of the European University
Institute of Florence and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales in Paris. Her research focuses on the political history
of late medieval and Renaissance Italy, particularly the languages
and practices of factional struggle and partisanship. She has previously
written on the role of mercenary armies in the state-building process
and is the author of La sfortuna di Jacopo Piccinino (Olschki:
2005).
Angus Gowland
Angus Gowland is currently Lecturer in Intellectual History
at University College London, having previously been a College Lecturer
at Christ's College, Cambridge and Research Fellow at Magdalene
College, Cambridge. His main research interest is in early-modern
European intellectual history, and more particularly sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century political thought, moral philosophy and
psychology. He teaches courses on the history of European political
thought ranging from ancient Greece to the nineteenth century, on
ideas about human nature in the Renaissance, on the history and
historiography of the Roman republic, and the methodology of intellectual
history. His principal research investigates early-modern ideas
about the disease of melancholy, addressing the interaction in this
area between humanist medicine, ethics, theology and politics, and
exploring their broad cultural-historical significance. He has previously
published on the idea of melancholy in early modern Europe, the
history of rhetoric, and the methodology of intellectual history,
and his book, The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy: Robert Burton
in Context is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
Timothy Hochstrasser
Timothy Hochstrasser is Senior Lecturer in International
History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He has previously worked at Downing College, Cambridge and Keble
College, Oxford, and held a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship.
His research focuses on the two-way relationship between intellectual
life and political action in the history of early modern Europe,
and above all on the use made of contemporary historical and philosophical
writing to legitimate and defend changing concepts of sovereignty
and political structure. His major publication is Natural Law
Theories in the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press:
2000). He has also co-edited (with P.Schröder) a related collection,
Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment: Contexts and
Strategies , (Kluwer: 2003). He is currently working on the
political theory of the French physiocrats.
Maurizio Isabella
Maurizio Isabella is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. He has been Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, London, and held the Stanley J Seeger fellowship with the Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University. Dr. Isabella’s interests include the political thought and the intellectual history of the Risorgimento, the study of international intellectual history in the nineteenth century, and in particular the relationship between Europe and the Mediterranean. Maurizio’s Risorgimento in Exile was published by Oxford University press in 2009. He is currently working on the geopolitical thought of the Risorgimento in a broad comparative framework.
Susan James
Susan James is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College,
London. She has previously taught at the University of Connecticut
and Cambridge University. She has been a visiting Fellow at the
Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University,
at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her overlapping
areas of philosophical research are the history of seventeenth and
eighteenth century philosophy, political and social philosophy,
and feminist philosophy. Her main publications include The Content
of Social Explanation (Cambridge University Press: 1984) ,
Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early Modern Philosophy
(Oxford University Press:1997) and as editor (with Stephanie Palmer)
, Visible Women: Essays in Legal Theory and Political Philosophy , (Hart: 2002), and The Political Writings of Margaret
Cavendish (Cambridge University Press: 2003).
Jeremy Jennings
Jeremy Jennings is Professor of Political Theory in the
Politics Department at Queen Mary, University of London, having
previously been a Professor and Head of Department in Politics at
Birmingham University and held visiting positions at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and the Institute for
Advanced Study, Indiana University, Bloomington. His main research
interest is in the field of the history of political thought, with
special reference to France, and to the history of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century political ideologies and the role of intellectuals
in particular. His main publications include G eorges Sorel:
the Character and Development of his Thought (Macmillan: 1985),
Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideas (Macmillan: 1990)
and, as editor, Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France
(Macmillan: 1993), (with Tony Kemp-Welch) Intellectuals in Politics:
From the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie. Routledge: 1997)
and (with Iseult Honohan) Republicanism in Theory and Practice
(Routledge: 2005).
Axel Körner
Axel Körner is Reader in Modern European History at
University College London, and scientific representative for the
European Doctorate in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean.
His main areas of interest are the social and cultural history of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, especially France, Italy,
Germany and the Habsburg Empire. He has previously written on cultural
practices in the French and German labour movements during the nineteenth
century. At present he is working on the political meaning and the
social use of culture and the arts in Bologna between the unification
of Italy and the 1920s. He is especially interested in the construction
of identity and memory, and in questions of historical theory and
methodology. His publications include Das Lied von einer anderen
Welt: Kulturelle Praxis im französischen und deutschen Arbeitermilieu,
1840-1890 (Campus-Verlag: 1997) and, as editor, 1848: A
European Revolution? International Ideas and National Memories of
1848 (Macmillan: 2000; rev.ed. Palgrave: 2003).
Cécile Laborde
Cécile Laborde is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
in the Political Science Department at University College London,
before which she held posts at the University of Exeter and King's
College, London. Her principal research interests are in the history
of political ideas and contemporary political philosophy, both Anglo-American
and European. She has worked on early 20th-century theories of law
and the state, pluralist thought, syndicalism, and on contemporary
theories of nationalism, toleration, republicanism, multiculturalism
and citizenship. She is interested in the interplay between normative,
critical and contextual theory, and in the methodology of comparative
political thought. Her main publications include La confrérie
layenne et les lébou du Sénégal. Islam et culture
traditionnelle en Afrique (CNRS/CEAN: 1996) and Pluralist
Thought and the State in Britain and France, 1900-25 (Macmillan:
2000). She is currently completing a book called Critical Republicanism
(Oxford University Press: forthcoming).
Avi Lifschitz
Avi Lifschitz is Lecturer in the Department of History at UCL and specializes in the intellectual history of Europe from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, with a strong emphasis on the theories of language, natural philosophy, psychology, and political ideas of the Enlightenment. The history of universities, royal academies, and exiled intellectuals constitutes another significant aspect of his research. He has also worked on the reception and transformation of French philosophy outside France, particularly in Prussia and other German states. He has published on French and German intellectual history, and is the editor (with Neven Leddy) of Epicurus in the Enlightenment: Mode d'emploi (Voltaire Foundation: forthcoming).
Ian McBride
Ian McBride is Senior Lecturer in History at King's College
London, having previously been a research fellow at Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge (1993–96) and Lecturer in History at the University
of Durham (1996–2000). His research interests include eighteenth-century
Ireland, the politics, ideas and culture of the wider British world
during the early modern period, and the more recent history of Northern
Ireland, especially the political and cultural dimensions of the
Northern Ireland conflict. He main publications include Scripture
Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the Late
Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press: 1998), The
Siege of Derry in Ulster Protestant Mythology (Four Courts
Press: 1997) and as editor (with Tony Claydon), Protestantism
and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650- c.1850
(Cambridge University Press: 1998) and History and Memory in
Modern Ireland (Cambridge University Press: 2001).
Niall O'Flaherty
Niall O' Flaherty is Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought at King's College London. His research focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth-century social, religious and scientific thought in Britain with particular reference to Thomas Robert Malthus and Charles Darwin. It examines the changing nexus between theology, science and social thought, as well as questions relating to the secularization of social discourse in the period. His forthcoming book gives an historical account of political and religious thought in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, focusing particularly on the most influential thinker of the period, William Paley (1743-1805). He is also more generally interested in European Political ideas in the Enlightenment.
Jason Peacey
Jason Peacey is Lecturer in the Department of History at UCL and specializes in British history of the early modern period. His work focuses on the politics and political culture of early modern Britain. He has a particular interest in the relationship between print culture and political life, and consequently focuses on the censorship and exploitation of the press by the political elite and the ways in which contemporaries experienced the early modern ‘information revolution’. He is currently writing a book which will assess how members of the public reacted to propaganda and newspapers as readers and consumers, and appropriated print in order to participate in national political life. He is the author of Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershott: Ashgate, 2004) and editor of The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
Alexander Samson
Alexander Samson teaches early modern Spanish and Latin
American literature and culture, as well as specialised courses
on the Golden Age comedia , the conquest of Mexico and
early colonial history, the works of Cervantes and in particular
Don Quixote . His research interests include the reign
and marriage of Philip II and Mary Tudor, translation and the rise
of vernacular languages, festival books and court culture, the history
and politics of the Habsburg Empire under Charles V and Philip II,
early modern political philosophy, New World prose narrative and
the comedia . He is the author of numerous articles on
such subjects as racial purity in 16th century Spain, international
marriage treaties, and the restaging of civic triumphs in the theatre,
and the editor of the forthcoming volume, 1623: The Spanish
Match (Ashgate: 2006).
Peter Schroeder
Peter Schroeder is Lecturer in European Social and Political
Studies and in History at University College London. His research
focuses on comparative approaches to the history of British and
continental European political thought from the sixteenth to the
early nineteenth century. In particular, he has worked on natural
law theories, the early enlightenment and international law in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His main publications include
Christian Thomasius zur Einführung (Junius Verlag:
1999), Naturrecht und absolutisches Staatsrecht. Eine vergleichende
Studie zu Thomas Hobbes und Christian Thomasius (Duncker und
Humblot: 2001) and Niccolò Machiavelli (Campus
Verlag: 2004).
Quentin Skinner
Quentin Skinner is Distinguished Visiting Professor in
the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London (2007–2008) and
takes up the position of Professor in the Humanities at Queen Mary
from 2008–2009. Professor Skinner's research interests include the
intellectual history of early-modern Europe and political philosophy
in the seventeenth-century, with a particular focus on the work
of Thomas Hobbes. He is also interested in a number of more purely
philosophical issues, such as the nature of interpretation and historical
explanation, and in several topics in contemporary political theory,
in particular the concept of political liberty and the character
of the State. Amongst his main publications are The Foundations
of Modern Political Thought , 2 vols (Cambridge University
Press: 1978), Machiavelli (Oxford University Press: 1981),
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
(Cambridge University Press: 1996) and Visions of Politics ,
3 vols (Cambridge University Press: 2002).
Gareth Stedman Jones
Gareth Stedman Jones is Professor in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London, in September 2010. He has been, since 1991, Director of the Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge, as well as Professor of Political Science, History Faculty, Cambridge University, between 1997 and 2010, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge University since 1974. His publications include the books An End to Poverty? London, 2004. Columbia University Press, 2005; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Harmondsworth, 2002, introduction of 180pp.; Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982, Cambridge, 1983; Outcast London, Oxford, 1971 [reprinted with new preface, 1984; reprinted Harmondsworth, 1992; Open University edition, 2002]. Forthcoming publications include, Religion and the Political Imagination, co-edited with Ira Katznelson, Cambridge, October 2010 and The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, co-edited with Gregory Claeys, forthcoming, Cambridge, March 2011. He is currently working on an intellectual biography of Marx commissioned by Penguin Penguin and expected to be published in 2012 and a more general work on political thought between the French Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848.
Adam Sutcliffe
Adam Sutcliffe is Lecturer in History at King’s College London. He previously taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has held visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, and the University of Leipzig. His principal research interests are in eighteenth-century intellectual history, the history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, and the history of approaches to cultural and ethnic difference. He is currently working on concepts of friendship in the eighteenth century, on the treatment of questions of nationhood and ethnicity in early radical thought, and on an edited volume on the history of philosemitism. He is the author of Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press: 2003), and the co-editor (with Ross Brann) of Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From al-Andalus to the Haskalah (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2004)
Georgios Varouxakis
Georgios Varouxakis is Reader in the History of
Political Thought in the History Department at Queen Mary, University
of London, before which he was a Reader in Political Theory at Aston
University. He has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at
Princeton University (2004). His research interests range across
nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century political thought and intellectual
history, with a special focus on Britain and France, including the
work of such figures as John Stuart Mill, Guizot, and Tocqueville,
and such themes as nationalism, patriotism, empire and cosmopolitanism.
His main publications include Mill on Nationality (Routledge:
2002), Victorian Political Thought on France and the French
(Palgrave: 2002) and, as editor (with Bart Schultz), Utilitarianism
and Empire (Lexington Books: 2005).