Callum Barrell is Associate Professor of Political Thought at Northeastern University London.
Recent Publications
My first book, History and Historiography in Classical Utilitarianism, 1800-1865, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2021. It provides the first comprehensive account of the utilitarians’ historical thought by intellectually re-situating their conceptions of philosophy and politics, at a time when the past acquired new significances as both a means and object of study. Drawing on published and unpublished writings—and set against the intellectual backdrops of Scottish philosophical history, German and French historicism, romanticism, positivism, and the rise of social science and scientific history—it recovers the depth with which Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, George Grote, and John Stuart Mill thought about history as a site of philosophy and politics. Contrary to their reputations as ahistorical and even antihistorical thinkers, the utilitarians developed complex frameworks in which to learn from and negotiate the past, inviting us to rethink the foundations of their ideas, as well as their place in—and relationship to—nineteenth-century philosophy and political thought. You can learn about the book on the New Work in Intellectual History podcast and read reviews in The Review of Politics and The History of Political Thought. It was released in paperback in November 2023.
Current Research
My current research, for which I was a Visiting Scholar at New York University (2022-2023), seeks to connect the nineteenth century to contemporary philosophy and political theory, with a particular focus on the Anthropocene, critical posthumanism, neo-materialism, and philosophy of history. I am currently working with Dr Sara Raimondi on a project called The Stupid Nineteenth Century: Reflections on an Ecological Crisis. Beyond that, I have wide-ranging interests in the philosophy of history (see here for a short article on Hegel), contemporary American literature, prose poetry, film, and environmental politics (on which I gave a TEDx talk).
About
I joined Northeastern University London (then New College of the Humanities) in September 2016 as Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations, having taught there as Visiting Lecturer. Now Associate Professor of Political Thought (since 2021) and Affiliate Professor of Political Thought at Northeastern University, Boston (2023-2026), I supervise PhDs and Masters dissertations in the history of political thought and political theory. At undergraduate and postgraduate levels I lecture on the history of political thought; international political theory, particularly the history of international thought and critical theory; and Green, environmental, critical posthumanist, and anthropocenic thought. In August 2023 I was appointed as Head of Sustainable Curriculum, in which capacity I lead the University’s pedagogy in relation to sustainability and environmental justice; and in September 2023 I was awarded a University prize for my contributions to scholarship and teaching. I have served twice as Acting Head of Faculty and for several years I served as the Faculty’s Postgraduate Programme Director. I am also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Prior to joining Northeastern’s global university network, I was a Senior Teaching Assistant in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London. I undertook a PhD at the same institution under the supervision of Professors Georgios Varouxakis and Gareth Stedman Jones. Prior to that, I studied for a BA in History and an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History (with Distinction) at the University of Cambridge, where, under the supervision of Professor Paul Cartledge, I developed a keen interest in ancient Greek philosophy and political thought; that interest has deluded me into writing a novel about the ancient world.
Dr Callum Barrell - Associate Professor of Political Thought 