Lectures in Intellectual History

By Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews

What's Lectures in Intellectual History about?

Recordings from the popular public lecture series featuring new work on all aspects of intellectual history. Hosted by the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews.

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Lectures in Intellectual History episodes:

04.03.2024
Christopher de Bellaigue - "Suleyman the Magnificent and the 16th-century race for empire"
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 31 January 2024.
03.21.2024
Ariane Fichtl - “Overcoming the biopolitical dynamic of enslavement to achieve Immediate Emancipation”
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 24 January 2024.
03.07.2024
Tim Stuart-Buttle - "Behind the Curtain: Hobbes and the politics of recognition"
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 17 January 2024.
12.27.2023
Richard Whatmore - "The End of Enlightenment (book launch)"
This talk was given at Toppings in St Andrews on December 7, 2023.
12.22.2023
Jesse Norman - "Ambition, revenge, truth, fiction - The Winding Stair"
The barely known story of the 30-year rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke is a fascinating case study in late-Elizabethan-Jacobean court politics. But it can also be a means by which to explore the limits of historical truth, and...
12.20.2023
Vassilios Paipais - "Between Pacifism and Just War: Oikonomia and Eastern Orthodox Political Theology"
This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on 15 November 2023.
12.08.2023
Jesse Norman - Ambition, revenge, truth, fiction: The Winding Stair
The barely known story of the 30-year rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke is a fascinating case study in late-Elizabethan-Jacobean court politics. But it can also be a means by which to explore the limits of historical truth, and...
11.14.2023
Adam Sisman - "The Perils of Biography"
Adam Sisman in conversation with Richard Whatmore. Recorded on 8 November 2023.
11.14.2023
Alan Kahan - "Three Pillars and Four Fears: A History of Liberalisms
This lecture was delivered on 11 October 2023 at the University of St Andrews.
05.18.2023
James Harris - “Hobbes and Rousseau on ‘the act by which a people is a people’”
This lecture was delivered on 5 April 2023 at the University of St Andrews.
05.04.2023
Brian Young - "Utilitarianism and the universities in Victorian England: the brothers Grote in nineteenth-century thought"
This lecture was delivered at the University of St andrews on March 15, 2023.
04.13.2023
Sarah Mortimer - "Virtue beyond Law? Christian Ethics and Political Duties in Reformation Europe"
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on February 15, 2023.
04.06.2023
Ariane Fichtl - "Bound with the enslaved: the role of women in the formation of the political discourse of Immediate Abolitionism and its egalitarian framework"
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on February 1, 2023.
10.06.2022
Martine van Ittersum - "The Working Papers of Hugo Grotius: A Case Study in the Micro-Sociologies of Archives"
specializes in Dutch overseas expansion in the early modern period, especially its implications for political thought and practice. She is also a book historian. Her research focuses on the social history of knowledge, including the materiality of texts, the archaeology...
09.18.2022
Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Maria Rosa Antognazza
During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history. In this sixth interview, we present a conversation with Maria...
09.13.2022
Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Jamie Gianoutsos
During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history. In this fifth interview, we present a conversation with Jamie...
09.07.2022
Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Carole Levin
During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history. In this fourth interview, we present a conversation with Carole...
08.29.2022
Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians – Tae-Yeoun Keum
During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history. In this third interview, we present a conversation with Tae-Yeoun...
08.22.2022
Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Jacqueline Broad
During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history. In this second interview, we present a conversation with Professor...
08.17.2022
Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Eileen M. Hunt
During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history. In this first interview, we present a conversation with Eileen...
05.31.2022
Emma McLeod - "John Bruce, precedent, and the 'mind of government' in the English and Scottish state trials of 1793-94"
This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on April 20, 2022.
05.24.2022
Rosa Antognazza - Leibniz as Historian
This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on April 13, 2022.
05.17.2022
Karie Schultz - Holy war advocates or secular political theorists? The case of the Scottish Covenanters, 1638-1646
This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on April 6, 2022.
04.20.2022
Craig Smith - Adam Smith and the Limits of Philosophy
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 23 March 2022 and subsequently at the George Mason University, where it was recorded. For a video of this lecture with the powerpoint slides, please vist:
04.09.2022
Jesse Norman - Uses and abuses of the Ancient Constitution
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 1 April 2022.
03.18.2022
Ryan Hanley - Commerce before Capitalism: Fénelon, Vauban, and Boisguilbert
This lecture was given on 16 February 2022 at the University of St Andrews. Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His most recent projects include The Political Philosophy of Fénelon, and a companion translation volume,...
05.07.2020
John Robertson - The Refutation of Natural Law by Sacred History in Giambattista Vico's New Science
Professor John Robertson (Cambridge & St Andrews) delivered this lecture at the University of St Andrews on February 27, 2020. The event was organised by the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research in collaboration with the Institute of Intellectual History.
03.26.2020
Giulia Delogu - The Emporium of Words: Free Ports and Port Cities as Laboratories of Modernity (16th-19th centuries)
Dr Giulia Delogu (Venice) delivered this lecture on February 5th 2020.
03.19.2020
Thomas Maissen - Britannia and her sisters in the 16th and 17th centuries: Political Representation and Iconography
Professor Thomas Maissen (Heidelberg/Paris) delivered this lecture on January 28, 2020 at the University of St Andrews.
03.05.2020
Ian MacLean - Old wine in new bottles? Hippocrates, the classical tradition and the Early Enlightenment
Professor Ian MacLean (Oxford/St Andrews) delivered this lecture at the Institute of Intellectual History on November 19th 2019.
02.20.2020
David Weinstein - Green's Hume
Professor David Weinstein (Wake Forest) delivered this lecture on November 12, 2019 at the University of St Andrews.
02.13.2020
Lucia Rubinelli - Sovereignty and Constituent Power in Weimar Germany
Dr Lucia Rubinelli (Cambridge) delivered the 18th István Hont Memorial Lecture on October 29 2019 at the University of St Andrews "This paper is the third chapter of a book manuscript, titled Constituent power: A history. The book mainly focuses on...
02.06.2020
James Poskett - Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920
Dr James Poskett (Warwick) delivered this lecture on October 15th 2019 at the University of St Andrews. Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found...
01.30.2020
Emma Hunter - Africa and the Global History of Liberalism
Dr Emma Hunter (Edinburgh) delivered this lecture at the University of St Andrews on September 24, 2019.
01.23.2020
Silvia Sebastiani - The Boundaries of Humanity in the Enlightenment: Orangutans, Slaves and Global Markets.
Dr Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS) delivered the 10th James H. Burnes Memorial Lecture on April 23, 2019 at the Institute of Intellectual History.
12.19.2019
Richard Whatmore - The End of Enlightenment: A synopsis of the 2019 Carlyle Lectures
Richard Whatmore (St Andrews) delivered this talk at the University of St Andrews on April 3, 2019. The talk was based on the Carlyle Lectures, which Professor Whatmore gave at the University of Oxford in the spring semester of 2019.
12.12.2019
Iain McDaniel - Writing the Intellectual History of Caesarism in the era of the Franco-Prussian War
Dr Iain McDaniel (Sussex) delivered the 16th István Hont Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Intellectual History (St Andrews) on April 2, 2019.
12.07.2019
Nathan Alexander - The Meanings of "Racism": Towards a history of the concept
Dr Nathan Alexander (Erfurt) delivered this talk at the University of St Andrews on February 2, 2019.
11.21.2019
Robin Douglass - The Moral Psychology of the Social Contract
11.14.2019
Alex Douglas - Spinoza and Religion
Dr Alex Douglas is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
11.07.2019
Paul Wood - The Rise and Fall of the Common Sense 'School' of Philosophy
The emergence of a Scottish 'school' of common sense philosophy has not yet been given the historical attention it deserves, despite the fact that the rise of common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments in the...
11.07.2019
Blair Worden - Ben Jonson and Liberty
Professor Blair Worden is an expert on early modern European history and the English Civil War period in particular. He has written numerous books, the principal of which are The Rump Parliament, 1648-1653 (1974), The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's...
10.31.2019
Riccardo Bavaj - The Spatiality of Ideas: Ernst Fraenkel, Richard Löwenthal, and the "Westernisation" of Political Thought
10.31.2019
Nicholas Mithen - Codifying Good Taste: Historical Scholarship and Epistemic Virtue in Early 18th Century Italy
10.31.2019
Teresa Bejan - Equality and hierarchy in the thought of Mary Astell
Ever since Mary Astell was introduced as the "First English Feminist" in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed "paradox" in her though is the product...
10.31.2019
Susan James - Putting One's knowledge to work: Spinoza on 'fortitudo'
Recorded on February 13th 2018 at the University of St Andrews.
03.14.2018
David Armitage - The Dark Side of Enlightened Cosmopolitanism: Civilisation and Civil War
Modern cosmopolitanism traces its routes back to the Enlightenment. In its individual and collectivist strains, it has become programatically pacifist by virtue of many of its central defining features. Under such a regime of cosmopolitanism, one might imagine the Kantian...
03.14.2018
The Dark Side of Enlightened Cosmopolitanism: Civilisation and Civil War
Modern cosmopolitanism traces its routes back to the Enlightenment. In its individual and collectivist strains, it has become programatically pacifist by virtue of many of its central defining features. Under such a regime of cosmopolitanism, one might imagine the Kantian...
11.22.2017
Richard Whatmore - Scotland, Europe and the End of Enlightenment
Why did so many European luminaries who had lived through the turmoil of the French Revolution turn to Scotland as a state that might represent a model for the future of the world? In this Inaugural Lecture, Professor Richard Whatmore...
11.22.2017
Scotland, Europe and the End of Enlightenment
Why did so many European luminaries who had lived through the turmoil of the French Revolution turn to Scotland as a state that might represent a model for the future of the world? In this Inaugural Lecture, Professor Richard Whatmore...

What's Lectures in Intellectual History about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Lectures in Intellectual History episodes:

Christopher de Bellaigue - "Suleyman the Magnificent and the 16th-century race for empire"

Ariane Fichtl - “Overcoming the biopolitical dynamic of enslavement to achieve Immediate Emancipation”

Tim Stuart-Buttle - "Behind the Curtain: Hobbes and the politics of recognition"

Richard Whatmore - "The End of Enlightenment (book launch)"

Jesse Norman - "Ambition, revenge, truth, fiction - The Winding Stair"

Vassilios Paipais - "Between Pacifism and Just War: Oikonomia and Eastern Orthodox Political Theology"

Jesse Norman - Ambition, revenge, truth, fiction: The Winding Stair

Adam Sisman - "The Perils of Biography"

Alan Kahan - "Three Pillars and Four Fears: A History of Liberalisms

James Harris - “Hobbes and Rousseau on ‘the act by which a people is a people’”

Brian Young - "Utilitarianism and the universities in Victorian England: the brothers Grote in nineteenth-century thought"

Sarah Mortimer - "Virtue beyond Law? Christian Ethics and Political Duties in Reformation Europe"

Ariane Fichtl - "Bound with the enslaved: the role of women in the formation of the political discourse of Immediate Abolitionism and its egalitarian framework"

Martine van Ittersum - "The Working Papers of Hugo Grotius: A Case Study in the Micro-Sociologies of Archives"

Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Maria Rosa Antognazza

Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Jamie Gianoutsos

Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Carole Levin

Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians – Tae-Yeoun Keum

Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Jacqueline Broad

Interviews with Leading Intellectual Historians - Eileen M. Hunt

Emma McLeod - "John Bruce, precedent, and the 'mind of government' in the English and Scottish state trials of 1793-94"

Rosa Antognazza - Leibniz as Historian

Karie Schultz - Holy war advocates or secular political theorists? The case of the Scottish Covenanters, 1638-1646

Craig Smith - Adam Smith and the Limits of Philosophy

Jesse Norman - Uses and abuses of the Ancient Constitution

Ryan Hanley - Commerce before Capitalism: Fénelon, Vauban, and Boisguilbert

John Robertson - The Refutation of Natural Law by Sacred History in Giambattista Vico's New Science

Giulia Delogu - The Emporium of Words: Free Ports and Port Cities as Laboratories of Modernity (16th-19th centuries)

Thomas Maissen - Britannia and her sisters in the 16th and 17th centuries: Political Representation and Iconography

Ian MacLean - Old wine in new bottles? Hippocrates, the classical tradition and the Early Enlightenment

David Weinstein - Green's Hume

Lucia Rubinelli - Sovereignty and Constituent Power in Weimar Germany

James Poskett - Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920

Emma Hunter - Africa and the Global History of Liberalism

Silvia Sebastiani - The Boundaries of Humanity in the Enlightenment: Orangutans, Slaves and Global Markets.

Richard Whatmore - The End of Enlightenment: A synopsis of the 2019 Carlyle Lectures

Iain McDaniel - Writing the Intellectual History of Caesarism in the era of the Franco-Prussian War

Nathan Alexander - The Meanings of "Racism": Towards a history of the concept

Robin Douglass - The Moral Psychology of the Social Contract

Alex Douglas - Spinoza and Religion

Paul Wood - The Rise and Fall of the Common Sense 'School' of Philosophy

Blair Worden - Ben Jonson and Liberty

Riccardo Bavaj - The Spatiality of Ideas: Ernst Fraenkel, Richard Löwenthal, and the "Westernisation" of Political Thought

Nicholas Mithen - Codifying Good Taste: Historical Scholarship and Epistemic Virtue in Early 18th Century Italy

Teresa Bejan - Equality and hierarchy in the thought of Mary Astell

Susan James - Putting One's knowledge to work: Spinoza on 'fortitudo'

David Armitage - The Dark Side of Enlightened Cosmopolitanism: Civilisation and Civil War

The Dark Side of Enlightened Cosmopolitanism: Civilisation and Civil War

Richard Whatmore - Scotland, Europe and the End of Enlightenment

Scotland, Europe and the End of Enlightenment