Dr Jon Parkin

Associate Professor of History

St Hugh's College

01865 (2)74976

jon.parkin@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk

Jon Parkin has an MA in Modern History from the University of Oxford (1991) and a PhD in Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge (1995). Jon was the Centenary Research Fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge (1995-1998) and British Academy Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the History Department at King’s College, London (1998-9). He went on to hold the posts of Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of York (1999-2012), before returning to St Hugh’s as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History in 2012.

Research Interests

Politics and ideas in the Early Enlightenment
European natural law theory
Thomas Hobbes
Reading and reception of political theory
Self-censorship
Latitudinarianism
Approaches to the History of Political Thought

For more information see page on St Hugh's College website

Parkin, J., ‘ Thomas Hobbes and the Problem of Self-Censorship’, in H. Baltussen and P.J. Davis The Art of Veiled Speech (2015).

Throughout Western history, there have been those who felt compelled to share a dissenting opinion on public matters, while still hoping to avoid the social, political, and even criminal consequences for exercising free speech. In this collection of fourteen original essays, editors Han Baltussen and Peter J. Davis trace the roots of censorship far beyond its supposed origins in early modern history.

Parkin, J., and Stanton T., Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment, London, British Academy, 2013.

The early enlightenment has been seen as an epoch-making period in the development of modern Europe, marking the beginnings of the transition from a 'religious' to an essentially 'secular' understanding of human relations and generating in the process new accounts of the relationship between religion and politics, in which the idea of toleration figured centrally.

Taming the Leviathan: The Reception of Thomas Hobbes’s Political and Religious Ideas in England 1640-1700, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Thomas Hobbes is widely acknowledged as the most important political philosopher to have written in English. Originally published in 2007, Taming the Leviathan is a wide-ranging study of the English reception of Hobbes's ideas. In the first book-length treatment of the topic for over forty years, Jon Parkin follows the fate of Hobbes's texts (particularly Leviathan) and the development of his controversial reputation during the seventeenth century, revealing the stakes in the critical discussion of the philosopher and his ideas.

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding: Early modern intellectual history and the History of Political Thought.

I currently teach:

Prelims	FHS
Historiography	British History IV
Theories of the State	British History V
British History IV	General History VIII
British History V	General History IX
General History III	Literature and Politics in Early Modern England
	The Science of Society 1650-1800
	The Scientific Movement in the Seventeenth Century
	Disciplines of History

Dr Jon Parkin

Featured Publications

Parkin, J., ‘ Thomas Hobbes and the Problem of Self-Censorship’, in H. Baltussen and P.J. Davis The Art of Veiled Speech (2015).

Parkin, J., and Stanton T., Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment, London, British Academy, 2013.

Taming the Leviathan: The Reception of Thomas Hobbes’s Political and Religious Ideas in England 1640-1700, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Current DPhil Students

Teaching

Publications