Dr Richard Bourke
Reader in the History of Political Thought
Location: Arts Two 4.05email: r.bourke@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7882 8345
Dr Richard Bourke studied at Dublin, London, Oxford and Cambridge. He graduated with a PhD from King’s College, Cambridge in 1990, and then took up a Lectureship at University College, Dublin, before moving to Queen Mary in 1993. He has been a Fellow of the John Carter Brown Library (2004), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2006–07), the Clark Memorial Library (2009), the Beinecke (2010) and the Huntington (2011). His book, Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (2003) was short-listed for the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize in 2005. He recently co-edited Political Judgement (2009) with Raymond Geuss, and is completing Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke for Princeton University Press. He has commented on current affairs for BBC television, the BBC World Service, the Financial Times and The Irish Times, and reviews regularly for Political Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement.
Research interests:
Richard Bourke’s research interests lie in the fields of the history of political thought, and modern Irish history. His research in the history of political thought concentrates on the Enlightenment, with a particular focus on the thought of Edmund Burke, but he also has interests in the political theory of the ancients. His research in Irish history has focused on the Northern Ireland conflict, but has also dealt with the roots of the crisis since 1886. At the same time he is interested in the historiography of nationalism.
Bourke’s work focuses on problems of empire and democracy, in particular on problems of conquest and ideas of equality. In this connection he is interested in the theme of civil conflict.
Postgraduate supervision:
Current or recently supervised PhD theses:
‘The British Enlightenment and Ideas of Empire in India, 1756–1773’
‘British Counter-Insurgency Policy: the IRA, the Haganah, the Irgun and the LEHI Compared’
‘Russia in Enlightenment Historiography’
Publications:
(Selected Recent)
‘Languages of Conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles’, Journal of Modern History, (forthcoming, 2011).
‘Pity and Fear: Providential Sociability in Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry’ in Michael Funk Deckard and Koen Vermeir eds., The Science of Sensibility: Reading Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry (Springer-Verlag GmbH: Heidelberg, 2011).
‘Pocock and the Presuppositions of the New British History’, The Historical Journal, 53:3 (September 2010), pp. 747–70.
‘Edmund Burke and International Conflict’ in Ian Hall and Lisa Hill eds., British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 91–116.
Ed. (with Raymond Geuss), Political Judgement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
‘Theory and Practice: The Revolution in Political Judgement’ in Political Judgement eds. Richard Bourke and Raymond Geuss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 73–109.
'Enlightenment, Revolution and Democracy'[PDF 149 KB], Constellations, 15:1 (March 2008)
‘Edmund Burke and the Politics of Conquest’, Modern Intellectual History, 4:3 (November 2007), 403–432.
Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (London: Random House, 2003)
Undergraduate teaching:
Introduction to Intellectual History
Postgraduate teaching:
Method and Practice in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual HistoryDemocracy: Ancient and Modern