New Work In Intellectual History

In this episode, Yifan Wang and Seungeun Lee speak with Professor Georgios Varouxakis (Queen Mary) about his new book The West: The History of an Idea (PUP, 2025).

In this episode, Harim and Hyein interview Lasse S. Andersen about the new edited volume entitled Political Economy from Pufendorf to Marx: Culture, Needs and Property Rights (CUP, 2026). This volume, which brings together seven hitherto unpublished papers by the late István Hont, was published by Cambridge University Press in January of 2026. The interview was conducted in the spring of 2025. Apo...

In this episode, Derek van Voorst interviews Professor Ferenc Hörcher. The two discuss his new edited text “Intellectual Conservatism: From Burke to Scruton”, as well as the history and future of modern conservatism both politically and philosophically.

In this episode, Seungeun Lee interviews Professor Robert Frost, the Burnett Fletcher Chair in History at Aberdeen University. Professor Frost gave a lecture at the Institute of Intellectual History on 17 September 2025, on which day he also sat down for an in-depth interview about his ongoing, multi-volume work on the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385-1569.

What is the relation between philosophy’s claim to disinterested universal rational inquiry and its historical existence as an assemblage of apparently sectarian schools? This is the question that formed the topic for a conversation that Valery Vino initiated with Ian Hunter.

In this episode, Derek van Voorst speaks with Dr Edward Jones Corredera, who is senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and assistant lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Madrid). The discussion focused on his recent book, Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America (OUP, 2024), al...

Roots and Branches: First episode out now. Intellectual Historian Richard Whatmore (University of St Andrews) explains why the Enlightenment, 18th century republicanism and the history of free states matter for today’s global politics. Subscribe to Roots and Branches on Spotify or iTunes by visiting the Episode Website below.

Get ready for Roots and Branches, the new ideas podcast from the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. In this introductory episode, host Selma Sondern explains what Intellectual History is, why it matters, and what to expect when Roots and Branches launches on 1 July 2025 with Prof Richard Whatmore. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes by visiting the Episod...

In this episode, Seungeun Lee speaks with Professor Davide Cadeddu (University of Milan) about his forthcoming book Classics of Historiography in Historical and Global Perspective (CUP), which will be published as part of the CUP ‘Elements in Critical Heritage Studies’ series.

The dark history of eugenic thought in Germany from the nineteenth century to today―and the courageous counter-voices. In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Dagmar Herzog about her new book The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2024). Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi genocide claimed the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people diag...

In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Elad Carmel about his new book Anticlerical Legacies - The deistic reception of Thomas Hobbes, c. 1670–1740 (Manchester University Press, 2024). The conversation touches upon a wide range of topics related to 17th-century religion, reception history, and deism.

In this episode, Seungeun Lee speaks with Isaac Nakhimovsky about his new book The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation  (Princeton, 2024). The book challenges the prevailing view of the Holy Alliance as a reactionary and illusory endeavor, as well as the idea of a linear progression of liberalism in opposition to such deviations. Nakhimovsky reconstructs the discourse around a...

In this interview, Ross Carroll (Dublin City University) talks about what's new and interesting in scholarship on Edmund Burke, following writing a new introduction to the great Irish thinker for Polity's Classic Thinkers series.

Mark Garnett, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Lancaster University, has a bone to pick with commentators on the British conservative tradition and the British Conservative Party. In this wide-ranging conversation, he discusses how so often what the Party’s ideology is taken being the same thing as conservative political thought. But for most of its history, the Conservative Party has been anything...

In this bonus episode, we bring an interview with Professor Peter Gordon about the philosopher and social theorist Theodor Adorno (1903 - 1969). The interview is part of a new podcast series on German Intellectual History entitled Zeitgeist und Geschichte. Discover more episodes here and subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.

In this episode, Richard Whatmore speaks with Aurelian Craiutu about his new book Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (CUP, 2023). The book challenges the conventional image of moderation as a “simple virtue for lukewarm and indecisive minds, searching for a fuzzy center between the extremes.” Instead, he shows moderation to be a complex virtue with a rich tradition and unexplored radica...

In this episode, Ojel L. Rodriguez Burgos interviews the historian of political thought Professor Ferenc Hörcher about his new book Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s Conservative Philosophy (2022).

In this wide-ranging interview, Richard Bourke (King’s College Cambridge) discusses not only Hegel’s anatomy of the modern world, but how Hegel’s reputation changed over the twentieth century. In doing so, we discuss the significance of not only Hegel’s thought to contemporary society, but also the study of the history of political thought in general.

In this episode, Emilie Aebischer speaks with Prof Michael Sonenscher about his most recent book After Kant - The Romans, the Germans and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought (PUP, 2023).

In the aftermath of the Second World War, many prominent liberals looked towards the future with eyes of disillusion and fear. In response they jettisoned key progressive ideals of the Enlightenment, such as equality and perfectibility, and formulated a defence of liberty in opposition to communism and totalitarianism more generally. In his new book, Samuel Moyn argues that the intellectual archit...

In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Matthijs Lok (Amsterdam) about his recently published book Europe against Revolution - Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past (OUP, 2023). In this book, Matthijs explores what counter-revolutionary thinkers in the decades around 1800 thought about Europe. Many of his conclusions are surprising, with critics of the French Revolution often be...

In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas about their new book Welfare for Markets - A Global History of Basic Income (UCP, 2023). In their book, Jäger and Vargas trace the history of basic income from its rise in American and British policy debates following periods of economic and political crisis to its modern popularity among ‘techno-populists’ in Silicon Va...

In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind, authors of Scarcity - A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (HUP, 2023). In this book, modern economics is shown to be founded on a particular view of scarcity, in which human beings are said to be possessed of indefinite desires. Society must therefore facilitate endless growth and con...

In this episode, Lasse Andersen speaks with Dr Stephen Bogle about his recently published book Contract Before the Enlightenment: The Ideas of James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair, 1619-1695 (OUP, 2023). The discussion covers many of the topics of Stephen’s book, including the life of Viscount Stair, the state of contract law before Stair, the central innovations in Stair’s Institutions of the Law of S...

In this episode, Lasse Andersen speaks with Dr James Stafford about his book The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1776-1848 (CUP, 2022). The topics of discussion cover many aspects of James’ book, including the impact of the American and French Revolutions on Irish politics; the Enlightenment critique of Empire in Ireland; Adam Smith’s proposal for a Union between Britain...