Neil Robertson

BA (Vind), MA (Dal), PhD (Cantab)

Neil G. Robertson is an associate professor in the Foundation Year, Early Modern Studies and Contemporary Studies programs. Dr Robertson graduated from the University of King’s College in 1985 with a BA in Political Science. He went on to take an M.A. in Classics at Dalhousie University, and in 1995 completed his PhD at Cambridge in Social and Political Science. He has held the position of director of the Foundation Year Program and is past director of the Early Modern Studies Program, which he helped to found. Dr Robertson was the King’s College dean of residence in 1989-1990 and has served as chair of faculty.

Teaching and Research Interests

• Contemporary political thought
• Early Modern political thought
• The shaping of Modernity in Early Modern Europe

Current Research Projects

Dr. Robertson is researching Leo Strauss and Neoconservatism in the Bush White House, and, as well, Descartes’s contributions to the development of Modernity.

Selected Publications

• “Milbank and Modern Secularity” in W.J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley eds. Radical Orthodoxy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
• ”Montesquieu, Rousseau and the Origins of Inequality” in John Duncan ed. On Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).
• “George Grant: Intimations of Deprival, Intimations of Beauty” Modern Age (Winter/Spring 2004, Vol. 46, nos. 1-2) 74-83.
• Edited with David Peddle, ”Lamentation and Speculation: George Grant, James Doull and the Possiblity of Canada” Animus 7 (2002) 1-29
• “Leo Strauss’s Platonism” Animus 4 ( 2000).
• “The Closing of the Early Modern Mind: Leo Strauss and Early Modern Political Thought” Animus 3 (1998) 1-16.