Welcome

I’m Benjamin Tan, a final-year PhD student in the history of political thought in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. I have interests in the co-development of ideas about democracy and modern empire, the politics of theorising race and racism, and the disciplinary history of political science.

My doctoral dissertation examines contests over the meaning and significance of race among British and American progressives at the turn of the twentieth century. It investigates how debates on the relationship between democracy and empire in Britain produced new and innovative critiques of white racial supremacy, including claims about race as a psychological force and corrupting ‘belief’. This work is supervised by Duncan Bell and funded by the Cambridge Gates Trust. Some related work from this project has been published in Political Theory and the European Journal of Political Theory (see Publications).

At Cambridge, I teach undergraduate papers in political theory, the history of political thought since c. 1890, and methods in history and politics. I have also run undergraduate workshops in study skills for the History Faculty, and am committed to helping students navigate and thrive in their academic studies. I have served as seminar assistant for the seminar in Political Thought and Intellectual History, and currently am the webmaster for the Cambridge Centre for Political Thought.

Prior to the PhD, I completed an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History (with distinction) also at Cambridge, funded by the Cambridge Trust and Trinity College, and a BA in History and Politics from the University of Oxford (Harris Manchester College).

If you have enquiries or questions, I would be very happy to hear from you via email ! You can also find me on Twitter and on my faculty page.