Professor Robert Lamb

My work focuses on both historical and contemporary texts in political philosophy/theory.

I am author of Thomas Paine and the Idea of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Property (Polity, 2021), as well as of articles in journals such as American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, and Journal of the History of Ideas. My next book, entitled Richard Rorty and the Idea of Political Hope: Liberalism as Uncertainty, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2026.

I was appointed Head of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology in the summer of 2023 (having served previously as Head of Politics from 2017-2020) and so I am not doing much teaching at the moment, though I still convene the 'Political Thought of Modernity' module that remains at the core of our undergraduate Politics programmes and continues the long-standing Exeter tradition of teaching political theory historically.

Since 2020, I have served as chair of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought.