Richard Bellamy (philosopher)


Richard Bellamy is a British political philosopher and Professor of Political Science at University College London. He is best known for his historical work on the Italian tradition of legal and political thought and his own writings in legal and political philosophy.
Bellamy won the David and Elaine Spitz Prize in 2009 for his book Political Constitutionalism: a Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy. In 2012 he was awarded the Serena Medal by the British Academy, given 'for eminent services towards the furtherance of the study of Italian history, philosophy or music, literature, art, or economics.' Bellamy has been the lead editor of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy since 2003. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2008, a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022, and a Member of the Academia Europaea in 2024.

Career

Bellamy was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and the Lycée des Nations La Châtaigneraie. He read History at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating with a ‘First’ in 1979. Afterwards, also at Cambridge, he did a PhD on ‘Liberalism and Historicism: History and Politics in the Thought of Benedetto Croce’ under the supervision of Quentin Skinner, during which time he spent two years as a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence from 1980-82. He completed his PhD in 1983. After a year teaching at the University of Pisa from 1982-83, he went on to a Junior Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford from 1983-86, where he was Junior Dean from 1984-86, and started the Nuffield Workshop in Political Theory, giving the first paper on 'Sex, Sin and Liberalism'. He was also Lecturer in the House of Politics at Christ Church from 1984-86. He was a Fellow and College Lecturer in History at Jesus College, Cambridge and Lector in History at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1986-88. He left for a Lectureship in Politics at the University of Edinburgh from 1988-92, and then held Chairs at the Universities of East Anglia from 1992-95, Reading from 1995-2002, and Essex from 2002-05. He has been at University College London since 2005, where he was the founding Head of the Political Science Department 2005-2010.
Richard Bellamy was Academic Director of the European Consortium for Political Research from 2002 to 2006 and Founding Chair of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought from 2008 to 2013. He was seconded to the EUI as Director of the Max Weber Programme from 2014 to 2019 and to the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin as Visiting Professor of Ethics and Public Policy from 2022 to 2024. He has also held Visiting Fellowships at Nuffield College, Oxford; the EUI; Australia National University ; the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo; and the Hanse Wissenschaft-Kolleg in Delmenhorst.
Bellamy has published 12 monographs, 30 edited volumes, over 90 journal articles and more than 80 book chapters. He has also edited translations of texts by Beccaria, Bobbio and Gramsci. His own writings have been translated into French, German, Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Chinese, Indonesian, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, and Spanish.

Books

Modern Italian Social Theory: Ideology and Politics from Pareto to the Present, John Wiley & Sons, 1991Liberalism and Modern Society: An Historical Argument, John Wiley & Sons, 1992Gramsci and the Italian State, with Darrow Schecter, Manchester Univ Press, 1993Liberalism and Pluralism: Towards a Politics of Compromise, Routledge, 1999Rethinking Liberalism, Continuum, 2005Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 2007Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2008Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013A Republican Europe of States: Cosmopolitanism, Intergovernmentalism and Democracy in the EU, Cambridge University Press, 2019From Maastricht to Brexit: Democracy, Constitutionalism and Citizenship in the EU, with Dario Castiglione, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019Flexible Europe: Differentiated Integration, Fairness and Democracy, with Sandra Kröger and Marta Lorimer, Bristol University Press, 2022Defending the Political Constitution, Oxford University Press, 2026

Edited Books

Victorian Liberalism, Routledge, 1990 - reissued 2024Theories and Concepts of Politics: An Introduction Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993
  • , A Textual Introduction to Social and Political Thought, Manchester University Press, 1996
  • , Constitutionalism in Transformation, Blackwell, 1996
  • , Pluralism and Liberal Neutrality, Routledge 1999
  • , Citizenship and Governance in the EU, Continuum, 2001
  • , Political Concepts, Manchester University Press, 2003
  • , The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2003
  • , Lineages of European Citizenship, Palgrave, 2004The Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers, Routledge 2005
  • , Making European Citizens: Civic Inclusion in a Transnational Context, Palgrave, 2006Public Ethics, Routledge 2010
  • , Representation and Democracy in the EU: Does the One Come at the Expense of the Other?, Routledge, 2014
  • , Political Theory and the European Union, Routledge 2017
  • , European Boundaries in Question?, Routledge, 2018
  • , The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2025