Gregory Claeys


Gregory Claeys is Professor of the History of Political Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of books on British intellectual and political history.

Career

He gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he studied at Jesus College, and was a Junior Research Associate at King's College, working on the "Political Economy and Society" project. From 1982 to 1987 he taught British and American studies at Universität Hannover in Hannover, then West Germany. Then he was Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. Since 1992 he has been Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. His interests are the history of radicalism and socialism in 19th century Britain, utopianism 1700–2100, Social Darwinism and Eugenics, and British intellectual history c. 1750 to the present.
From the beginning of his career his research interests have focused chiefly upon the theory and practice of sociability. His main concern now is catastrophic environmental destruction, and how to avoid it.
He has lectured widely, including at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Oxford Literary Festival, in 2016 at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, and in 2018-19 at similar events at Winchester, Chichester and Lewes. He gave a TEDx talk entitled "My Road to Utopia" at Linz in 2019. In 2016 he commenced, as editor, the series, "Palgrave Studies in Utopianism".

Honors

In 1995 Claeys was given the Distinguished Scholars Award by the Communal Studies Association. In 2002 he was given the Lyman Tower Sargent Distinguished Scholar Award by the North American Society for Utopian Studies. In 2015 he was elected to the Academia Europaea/The European Academy. In 2016 he was elected Chair of the Utopian Studies Society. In June 2018 he was awarded the Cantemir Prize by HRH Prince Radu of Romania at a ceremony held at Peles Castle, Sinaia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Arts. He has been visiting professor at the Australian National University, Canberra, Keio University , the University of Hanoi, and Peking University.

Works