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CIH Blog

Welcome to the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History Blog! 

Our blog is a space to publish and read about some of the latest research in intellectual history! Below you will find an archive of short research pieces, interviews, and more. New posts are published every few weeks.

If you'd like to contribute to the blog email us at cih@history.ox.ac.uk. We welcome submissions of 800-1200 words on any aspect of intellectual history from students, staff, or researchers at the University of Oxford. We also publish longer form interviews and reflections on recent academic events. 

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Doing Ideas: Intellectual History as a History of Thinking

24 July 2026
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Thomas Barlow's Europe: Universities and Early Enlightenment Culture

06 June 2026
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Peter Mandler's Response

20 April 2026
cartoon cih blog ingram pinn financial times

The Language of Individualization in Intellectual Life

19 April 2026
vicky pollard

The Language of Social Sciences and Popular Culture

18 April 2026
see if youre normal daily express 5 sept

Audiences and Experts in the Language of Social Science in Everyday Life

17 April 2026
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Manuscripts and Printed Books in Fifteenth-Century Oxford

26 February 2026
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The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: A Conversation with John Samuel Harpham

19 January 2026
mississipi mounds

Interpretations of a Transcultural 'Other'

20 December 2025
aquinas and the lord

Natural Law and Christian Communities in Early Modern Europe: Reflections on a Colloquium

27 November 2025
chang at united nations

"Chinese have no concept of human rights": revisiting the Universal Declaration

21 November 2025
marshall mcluhan

Why Did the World Forget Marshall McLuhan?

01 November 2025
grotius belli ac pacis

Natural Law and Christian Communities in Early Modern Europe: Reflections on a Colloquium

22 October 2025
faisal devji

A Conversation with Professor Faisal Devji: South Asian Intellectual History

04 October 2025
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Rethinking Anachronistic Histories: A Reflection on Time

30 September 2025
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Anachronism and Power in Intellectual History

30 September 2025
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Anachronism and Tradition in Intellectual History

30 September 2025
john rogers herbert assertion of liberty of conscience by the independents of the westminster assembly of divines

'To thrust such Monsters upon the English': The Grallae Controversy in the 1640s

16 September 2025
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Enlightening the king: French-Swedish relations in the letters of Gustaf Philip Creutz with Gustav III

04 September 2025
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'Dropping Out' as Political Thought? Towards a Global Intellectual History of Hippies

01 July 2025
emilie von berlepsch

Searching for "Demokratin"? The Curious Case of Women Democrats in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany

06 June 2025
barbara ward

Planetary Orders and Global Divisions in the Political Thought of Barbara Ward

15 May 2025
jens andersen hansen

The Anti-Elitist Democrat, Jens Andersen Hansen

14 April 2025
reception history

Liberalism, Conservatism, and Reception History

28 March 2025
Ivan Kapushchak's grave

A Peasant Democrat in the 1848 Revolution?

14 March 2025
Mihály Táncsics

Democracy or Popular Government? The Political Thought of Mihály Táncsics in the Vormärz

21 February 2025
Malthe Conrad Bruun

Malthe Conrad Bruun: A "Dangerous Democrat"

07 January 2025
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Jacobins, Republicans, and Democracy in Mainz

21 November 2024
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Looking for Kant: An Interrail Archive Trip

07 November 2024
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Intellectual History, Philosophy, and Literature

26 October 2024
18th Century World Map by Georg Matthaus Seutter

Eurocentrism and Global Intellectual History

18 October 2024
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Presentism in Intellectual History

11 October 2024
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Carl Rudolf Löwstedt: the first Swedish democrat?

24 September 2024
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The Intellectual History of Unimplemented Protest Tactics

12 September 2024
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Between Democracy and Liberalism: Ludwig Bamberger's Path

22 August 2024
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What did it mean to be a democrat in the Age of Revolutions?

12 August 2024
dante e il fascismo

Perpetual Return: What a Fascist Reading of Dante Tells Us About Philology

01 August 2024
simon episcopius

Ethics and Equality: The Remonstrant Vision of Church and Society

01 July 2024
abraham cowley

Odes to the Early Royal Society

02 June 2024
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How 'Chinese' is Chinese Theology? The Case of Wu Yaozong

29 April 2024
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The Encyclopédie Nouvelle: The 19th Century's Magnificent Achievement and Glorious Failure

04 March 2024
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J. G. A. Pocock (1924-2023)

02 February 2024
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Jim Bennett and John Heilbron as Historians of Science and Intellectual Historians

09 January 2024
the end of enlightenment

The End of Enlightenment: A Conversation with Richard Whatmore

19 December 2023
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The Reception of Confucianism in Early Modern Britain

30 November 2023
jose harris

Political Thought and the Welfare State: Jose Harris's History of Social Policy

01 November 2023
francesco hayez, lampugnanis conspiracy (1826)

The Renaissance 'Age of Conspiracies' Revisited: Intellectualising a Sixteenth-Century Coup D'état

25 September 2023
max weber

In Conversation with Peter Ghosh

29 August 2023
this map of the island of jamaica by thomas craskell and james simpson

An Aesthetic of Science in British Imperial Cartography of the Caribbean, c. 1700-1775

28 July 2023
leviathan

Thomas Hobbes and the Rejection of 'Objective Being'

02 June 2023