Jeffrey R. Collins is Professor of History. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1999 and served, for three years, as a Harper Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago before coming to Queen’s in 2004. He has published numerous articles on early modern religion, politics, and political thought, and is regular book reviewer for publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Times Literary Supplement. His first book, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, was published by Oxford University Press in 2005; his second, In the Shadow of Leviathan: John Locke and the Politics of Conscience, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. He is currently working on an intellectual history (and book history) of Charles I’s purported “king’s book,” the Eikon Basilike, published immediately after his execution in 1649.
In the Shadow of Leviathan: John Locke and the Politics of Conscience
The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes
Articles, Review Articles, and Chapters
- Review Essay. "Jonathan Marks, Let's Be Reasonable: a Conservative Case for Liberal Education." Society 58 (2021), 254-9.
- "Eikon Basilike: the Intellectual History of a Martyrdom," in Revolutionising Politics: Culture and Conflict in England, 1620-1660, eds. Scott Sowerby, Eleanor Hubbard, and Paul Halliday (Manchester, 2021).
- "Atheism in Early Modern England," in The Cambridge History of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse (Cambridge, 2021).
- "Thomas Hobbes and the Christian Commonwealth." in A Companion to Hobbes (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy), ed. Marcus Adams (Oxford, 2021).
- “The Lost Historiography of Liberalism.” Review of Politics 81 (2019), 673-688.
- “All the wars of Christendom: Hobbes’s account of religious conflict.” in Hobbes on Politics and Religion, eds. Robin Douglass and Laurens con Apeldoorn (Oxford University Press, 2017).
- “Thomas Hobbes: a bibliography.” Renaissance and Reformation subfield of Oxford Bibliographies, editor in chief, Margaret King. (Spring, 2017).
- “Thomas Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History,” Oxford Handbook of Thomas Hobbes, eds. A.P. Martinich and Kinch Hoekstra (Oxford, 2015).
- “Malcolm’s Leviathan: Hobbes’s Thing,” Modern Intellectual History 12 (2015), 95-120.
- “Thomas Hobbes, Father of Atheists,” in Atheism and Deism Revalued: Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650-1800, eds. Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci, Jeffrey Wigelsworth (Ashgate, 2013).
- “Thomas Hobbes, Heresy, and the Theological Project of Leviathan,” Hobbes Studies (2013), 6-33.
- “The Early Modern Foundations of Classic Liberalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2011).
- “Restoration Anti-Catholicism: A Prejudice in Motion,” in England’s Wars of Religion Revisited, ed. Glenn Burgess and Charles Prior (Ashgate, 2011).
- “Quentin Skinner’s Hobbes and the Neo-Republican Project,” Modern Intellectual History 5 (2009), 343-67.
- “Redeeming the Enlightenment: New Histories of Religious Toleration,” Journal of Modern History 81, n.3 (2009).
- “Interpreting the Religion of Thomas Hobbes: an Exchange,” with A.P. Martinich, Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009), 165-180.
- “Silencing Thomas Hobbes: the Presbyterians and Leviathan” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’ Leviathan, ed. Patricia Springborg (Cambridge, 2007).
- “Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy of 1649.” Historical Journal 45, n. 2 (2002).
- “The Church Settlement of Oliver Cromwell.” History 87, n. 285 (2002).
- “Christian Ecclesiology and the Composition of Leviathan: a Newly Discovered Letter to Thomas Hobbes.” Historical Journal 43, n. 1 (2000).
- “The Restoration Bishops and the Royal Supremacy.” Church History 68, n. 3 (1999).
- early modern Britain
- history of political thought
