POLIS Academic
Dr Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell is a Senior Lecturer in POLIS and a Fellow of Christ's College.
After reading War Studies at King’s College, London, Duncan completed the M.Phil in International Relations at Cambridge, and spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, New York, before returning to Cambridge to complete his doctoral thesis in the Faculty of History. He was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ’s College (2003-7), and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2008-10). He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Center of European Studies, Harvard University
Teaching
Duncan teaches political thought and international relations theory, at both undergraduate and graduate levels in POLIS. He also teaches aspects of the history of modern political theory in the Faculty of History.
Duncan is also the co-convenor (with Dr Duncan Kelly) of the Political Thought research group in the department.
Research
Duncan's primary research interests are in contemporary (international) political theory and modern intellectual history. More specifically, he works on the following topics:
Political Theory
Contemporary normative theories of global politics, especially those concerning distributive justice, the ethics of war, as well as critical theory (broadly understood); varieties of political realism; the nature, scope and foundations of political thought, in particular the relationship between history and theory; and conceptions of social memory and identity.
Intellectual History
British social and political thought, c.1815-present; British and American ideologies of empire and imperial expansion (c.1850-1939); and the history of the human sciences (especially political science and international relations) in the twentieth century.
Duncan is currently working on a number of projects, including a co-edited collection entitled The Cold War in Pieces (with Joel Isaac) and a book on the political thought and intellectual history of Anglo-American relations during the twentieth century. He is also working on essays about the intellectual history of the British empire, utopianism and modernism in political thought, and the character of liberal political philosophy, past and present.
Some Recent and Forthcoming Publications
Books
- The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2007) [Winner of the Whitfield Book Prize, Royal Historical Society]
- (ed.) Memory, Trauma, and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
- (ed.) Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth Century British Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
- (ed.) Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford University Press, 2009)
- (ed.) Ethics and World Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Duncan is also an editor of Pickering and Chatto’s monograph series, Empires in Perspective
Articles and Book Chapters (select)
- "John Stuart Mill on Colonies," Political Theory, Vol. 38, no. 1 (2010), pp. 1-31
- "Republican Imperialism: J. A. Froude and the Virtue of Empire," History of Political Thought Vol. 30, no. 1 (2009), pp. 166-91
- “Writing the World: Disciplinary History and Beyond,” International Affairs, Vol. 85, no. 1 (2009), pp. 3-22
- "Agonistic Democracy and the Politics of Memory," Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory Vol. 15, no. 1 (2008), pp. 148-66
- "Empire and Imperialism" in Gregory Claeys and Gareth Stedman Jones (eds), The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
- "International Society in Victorian Political Thought: T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick," Modern Intellectual HistoryVol. 3, no. 2 (2006), pp. 1-32 [with Casper Sylvest]
- "Beware of False Prophets: Biology, Human Nature, and the Future of International Relations Theory," International Affairs, Vol. 82, no. 3 (2006), pp. 479-96
- 'From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought,' The Historical Journal Vol. 49, no. 3 (2006), pp. 1-25
- 'Empire and International Relations in Victorian Political Thought: Historiographical Essay,' The Historical Journal Vol. 49, no. 1 (2006), pp. 281-98
- 'The Idea of a Patriot Queen? The Monarchy, the Constitution, and the Iconographic Order of Greater Britain, 1860-1900,' Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 34, no. 1 (2006), pp. 2-19
- 'Dissolving Distance: Empire, Space, and Technology in British Political Thought, c.1770-1900,' Journal of Modern History, Vol. 77, no. 3 (2005), pp. 523-63
- 'Unity and Difference: J. R. Seeley and the Political Theology of International Relations,' Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, no. 3 (2005), pp. 559-79
- 'Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology and National Identity,' British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 54, no. 1 (2003), pp. 63-81
- 'Anarchy, Power and Death: Contemporary Political Realism as Ideology,' Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol. 7, no. 2 (2002), pp. 221-239
- 'Language, Legitimacy, and the Project of Critique,' Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 27, no. 3 (2002), pp. 327-350
Curriculum Vitae
A brief Curriculum Vitae (including a complete list of publications)
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- E-mail: dsab2@cam.ac.uk
- Tel: 01223 767249
- Address: POLIS
Research Interests:
Primary research interests are in contemporary (international) political theory and intellectual history
Teaching Responsibilities
In POLIS Duncan teaches international relations theory - specialising in social and political theory - and convenes the research seminar in international political thought. He is also the convenor of the Political Theory and International Relations research group.