Richard Bellamy (philosopher)

Richard Bellamy (born 15 June 1957) is a British philosopher and Professor of Political Science at University College London.

He is known for his historical work on the Italian tradition of legal and political thought and his own writings in legal and political philosophy.

Bellamy 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 (EUI) in Florence from 1980-82.

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 completed his PhD in 1983.

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.

Richard Bellamy was Academic Director of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) from 2002-2006 and Founding Chair of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought from 2008-2013.

He has been at University College London, where he set up the Political Science Department, since 2005.

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, literature, art or economics.' Bellamy has been the lead editor of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP) since 2003.

He was seconded to the EUI as Director of the Max Weber Programme from 2014-19 and to the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin as Visiting Professor of Ethics and Public Policy from 2022-24.

He has also held Visiting Fellowships at Nuffield College, Oxford; the EUI; Australia National University (ANU); the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo; and the Hanse Wissenschaft-Kolleg (HWK) in Delmenhorst.

He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hertie.

Bellamy has published 11 monographs, 30 (co-)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.