Research group: History of ideas
Exploring the intellectual lives of past figures and societies and how they continue to affect the contemporary world.
Summary
About our research
Our group explores the intellectual lives of past figures and societies - and their legacies in the present.
This includes:
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the cultural, social and critical impacts of past ideas
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the thinkers who developed and shaped them
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the political, social, cultural, and intellectual contexts in which these ideas took shape
Our research is cross- and inter-disciplinary, embracing a variety of methodologies and approaches, reflecting the group’s diverse theoretical and conceptual base.
Among the thinkers we focus on are:
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Iris Murdoch (Bergqvist)
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Jean-François Lyotard (K Crome)
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Giladi)
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Martin Heidegger (Haase)
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Antonio Gramsci (Jackson)
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Henri Bergson (Khandker)
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Strickland)
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Simone Weil (Thomas)
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Baruch Spinoza (Thomas)
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Hong Xiuquan (Kilcourse)
Our research includes translations of key texts and critical appraisals of how prominent works emerged and their ongoing impact today.
We work with a range of organisations, including the National Trust (Oates) and the People’s History Museum (Jackson), as well as a partnership with the Royal College of Psychiatrists on policy-oriented philosophy (Bergqvist).
You can find information about PhD or MA by Research opportunities on our study with us page. Details of our members’ research interests and specialisms can be found on their staff profiles.
We also publish details about projects our current PhD students are working on and our wider history research community.
Our expertise
We explore key ideas and movements, including:
- the English reformation (Oates)
- early modern eschatology (A Crome)
- and cross-cultural Sino-Western encounters (Kilcourse)
As well as diverse themes in the history of:
- early modern and modern philosophy (Giladi, Strickland and Thomas)
- and twentieth-century political and philosophical thought (Bergqvist, K Crome, Haase, Jackson, Khandker and Thomas)
Selected projects
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Key publications
- Crome, A (2018) Christian Zionism and English National Identity 1600-1850. Basingstoke: Palgrave
- Crome, K (2020) Disputing Critique: Lyotard’s Kantian differend. In: Kant and the Continental Tradition. New York: Routledge
- Giladi, P (2020) The Dragon Seed Project: Dismantling the Master’s House with the Master’s Tools? In: Hegel and the Frankfurt School. New York: Routledge
- Jackson, R (2020) Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks. Leiden: Brill
- Kilcourse, CS (2020) Instructing the Heavenly King: Joseph Edkins’s Mission to Correct the Theology of Hong Xiuquan. Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 71(1)
- Oates, R (2018) Moderate Radical: Tobie Matthew and the English Reformation.Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Strickland, L and Lodge, P (2020) Leibniz’s Key Philosophical Writings: A Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Thomas, C (2020) ‘On Religious and Cultural Objects: Articulate and Inarticulate Bodies in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Nature’. European Journal of Philosophy
Organisations we work with
The Royal Institute of Philosophy
National Trust
People's History Museum
Centre for Ethics in Public Life
Contact
Contact us
You can contact individual members of the team through their staff profiles.
For general enquiries, please contact our research group leads, Dr Anna Bergqvist and Dr Robert Jackson.