Professor Annelien de Dijn

Mid-Career Fellow 2018-19

Freedom: An Unruly History

My book traces the genealogy of a key political concept: freedom. It shows that current understandings of freedom – the idea that freedom depends on the limitation of state power – must be understood as a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking about liberty.

More information

Research outcomes

De Dijn, A. (2020).

Freedom: An unruly history. Harvard University Press.

Areas of interest

History of Political Thought Europe USA Freedom Politics

Cohort

MCF4

Biography

Annelien de Dijn is a Professor of Modern Political History at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the history of political thought in Europe and in the United States from 1700 to the present. She is the author of Freedom: An Unruly History(Harvard University Press, 2020) and of French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society (Cambridge University Press, 2008, paperback edition October 2011).

Biographical details correct as of 02.10.24