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Room: Phone: Email: Office Hours:

Faculty of Arts Building Floor 3 mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk  Do please contact me by email if you wish to see me

 

Research Interests

 
My research includes work in the history of political thought, social and cultural history from 1750-1850, and political theory and political sociology, most recently on justice in relation to ageing, political corruption and issues relating to standards in public life. I am currently working on issues relating to political conduct and corruption, and the re-imagining of democracy at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries in Central and Northern Europe. I have just completed a project on the Diaries of William Upcott. For the Jan 15, 2026 episode of In Our Time on Mill's On Liberty, see: .

I worked with the for many years and am now Senior Academic Advisor to the Ethics and Integrity Commission. See also my and the interview there about aspects of my work in this area (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdInTTriPoI&feature=share). There is a Kenya dimension to these interests details of which can be found on the following website: /fac/cross_fac/ehrc/events/constructionspublicoffice/

And there is a 'political realism' dimension as well, which is discussed in

From 2007-2010 I ran a three year digitization project on the the Diary of William Godwin, 1788-1836, funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Grant. The edited edition of the diary is currently undergoing further editorial and technical work.

I co-direct with Joanna Innes (Oxford) the research project 'Re-imagining Democracy 1750-1850' see we are working on its fourth book examining Northern and Central Europe.

I have also worked with Kate Astbury (Warwick) on the 100 days project http://www.100days.org.uk/ and the Barricades Project:

I am the series editor of Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought for Oxford University Press. The most recent volume published was Malcolm Schofield's Cicero 2020.

 

Academic Career

• 2024- to date Emeritus Professor of History and Politics, ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½
• 2013-2024 Professor of History and Politics, ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½
• 2014-2022 Director of Research and Impact, History
• 2013-2018 Director of the
• 2000-2005: Head of Department, Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford (for leaving conference see )
• 1983-2013: Fellow and Tutor in Politics and a Lecturer in Politics, Oriel College, University of Oxford

 
Teaching

• (undergraduate first-year option module)
• (undergraduate second-year module)
• PH 370

Publications

Recent publications include

Books:

• ed., with Hillary Burlock and Ian Newman, Dance and Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2026)
• ed., with Aysuda Aykan and Curtis Leung, A Collector Collected: The Diaries of William Upcott (RHS Camden Series, CUP, 2025)
• ed. with Clare Clarke,  ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½, December 2023)
• E. Posado-Carbo, J. Innes and M. Philp eds., Re-imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York, Oxford University Press, 2023).
• Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in London 1789-1815 (Cambridge University Press, 2020 (September))
• ed with Georgios Vouraxakis, Happiness and Utility: Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen (UCL Press, London, 2019)
• ed. with Joanna Innes, Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean 1780-1860 (Oxford University Press, 2018)
• ed. The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (Oxford World's Classics, 2018)
• ed. with Katherine Astbury, Napoleon's Hundred Days and the Politics of Legitimacy (Palgrave, 2018)
• ed. with Fred Rosen, J. S. MIll, On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays (OUP, World's Classics, 2015)
• Reforming Ideas in Britain: Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution 1789-1815Link opens in a new window (Cambridge University Press, November 2013)
• ed. William Godwin, (OUP, World's Classics, 2013)
• ed. with J. Innes, (Oxford University Press, 2013)
• ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012)
• (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2007)
• Thomas Paine (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007)
• ed., Resisting Napoleon: The British Response to the threat of invasion 1797-1815 (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006)
• Napoleon and the Invasion of Britain, with Alexandra Franklin, (Bodleian Library, Oxford, 2003)
• ed., Thomas Paine Rights of Man, Common Sense, and other Political Writings (Oxford, World's Classics, 1995)
• General Editor, Collected Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, 7 Volumes (Pickering Masters 1993)
• General Editor, Collected Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin, 8 Volumes (Pickering Maters, 1992)
• ed., The French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991)
• Paine (Oxford University Press, Past Master Series, 1989)
• Godwin's Political Justice (Duckworth (UK) and Cornell University Press (USA), 1986) (paper 1988)

 Recent articles include:

• with Anna Baula ' Catherine Hutton's Travel Diary (1779)', Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies doi:10.1111/1754-0208.12975
• The Passions, Real Politics, and the Practice of Political Theory: an interview with Mark Philp' Politics and Poetics V, July 2023
• 'Touch: Changing norms of physical contact between men and women in 18th century England' Dix Huitieme Siecle 55, 2023, 63-77
• 'Candour, Courage and the Calculation of Consequences in Godwin's 1790s' in Eliza O'Brien et al, New Approaches to William Godwin (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2021)
• 'Music and Movement in Britain 1789-1815' Journal of British Studies 60 (2) 2021 403-415
• 'Paine and Socioeconomic Rights' French History Volume 33, Issue 4, December 2019, Pages 554–57
• 'William Godwin' in The Wollstonecraftian Mind ed S. Berges, E. Hunt-Botting, and A. Coffee et al (Routledge, 2019), 211-223.
• with Dominic Burbidge 'Corruption' in the Routledge Handbook of Democratization in Africa ed.,Gabrielle Lynch and Peter VonDoepp (Routledge, London, 2019), 434-447
• 'The Corruption of Politics' Social Philosophy and Policy 35 (2) Winter 2018, 73-93.
• 'Democracy' from Book to Life: The emergence of the term in active political debate to 1848' with Joanna Innes in Democracy in Modern Europe: A Conceptual History, ed., Jussi Kurunmaki, Jeppe Nevers and Henk te Velde (Berghahn, New York, 2018, 16-41.
• 'Politics and the "Pure of Heart": Realism and Corruption' in Matt Sleat ed., Politics Recovered: Realist Thought in Theory and Practice (Columbia University Press, New York, 2018), 194-217.
• 'Afterword: Dibdin's Miscellany' in Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley and Ian Newman, eds., Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018).
• 'Unconventional Calling:Godwin, Women and Visiting in the 1790s' in K. Gilmartin ed.,Sociable Places: Locating Culture in Romantic-era Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
• 'Nervous laughter and the invasion of Britain 1797-1805' in Mark Knights and Adam Morton, The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain: Political and Religious Culture 1500-1800 (Boydell, 2017).
• 'Justice, Realism, and Family Care for the Aged' Social Philosophy and Policy (Winter, 2016) vol 23 (1 and 2).
• 'The Definition of Political Corruption', in Paul Heywood, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption, (Routledge,London, 2015) pp. 17-29.
• ‘Realism about Political Corruption’ Mark Philp and Elizabeth David-Barrett, Annual Review of Political Science 18, 2015, pp. 329-48.
• 'Revolutionaries in Paris, Paine, Jefferson and Democracy' in Simon P. Newman and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions, (University of Virginia Press, 2013)
• ‘Representing America: Paine and the New Democracy’, in E. Dzelzainis and R. Livesey, The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776–1914 (Ashgate, 2013).
• Preaching to the Unconverted: Rationality and Repression in the 1790s’ Enlightenment and Dissent 2013.
• ‘Realism without Illusion’ Political Theory October 2012, 40: 629-649.
• ‘Paine: Rights of Man’ in P. Clemit ed., Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the French Revolution in the 1790s (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• ‘Improper Levity: Sarah Elwes’s Calling’ Bodleian Library Record 24(1) 2011
• ‘Godwin, Thelwall and the Means of Progress’ in Godwinian Moments, ed., Victoria Myers & Bob Maniquis, (University of Toronto Press, 2011).
• ‘What is to be Done: Political Theory and Political realism’ European Journal of Political Theory October 2010 vol. 9 no. 4, 466-484.
• The substance and the shadow: Tale of Two Cities and the French revolution, in C. Jones, J McDonagh and J. Mee Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, and the French Revolution (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009).
• ‘Delimiting Political Accountability’ Political Studies 2009, Vol 59 (1), 28-53.
• ‘Political Theory and the Evaluation of Political Conduct’ Social Theory and Practice 34 (3) July 2008, 389-410.
• ‘Peacebuilding and Corruption’ in International Peacekeeping 15(3) June 2008, 310-27.
• ‘Political Theory and History’, in D. Leopold and M. Stears, Political Theory: Methods and Approaches (Oxford University Press, 2008).
• 'Disconcerting Ideas: Explaining Popular Radicalism and Popular Loyalism in the 1790s' in G Burgess and M Festenstein eds., English Radicalism 1550-1850 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007).
• ‘Politics and Memory: Nelson and Trafalgar in Popular Song’ – in D. Cannadine ed., Trafalgar in History (Palgrave, 2006).
• ‘Corruption Definition and Measurement’ in C Sampford et al Measuring Corruption (Ashgate, 2006).
• ‘Modeling Political Corruption in Transition’ in Political Corruption ed., Von Alleman (Verlag, 2005).
• New Dictionary of National Biography entries on William Godwin (5,000) and Thomas Paine (12,000) (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• ‘Enlightenment, Republicanism and Radicalism’ in The Enlightenment World, ed., M Fitzpatrick, P. Jones, K. C. Knellwolf and I. McCalman (London, Routledge, 2004).