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Jerónimo Rilla is a postdoctoral researcher at UCL in the framework of a British Academy International Fellowship. A historian of political thought, his work focuses on Thomas Hobbes, the early modern concept of the state, and its representations through the rhetorical figure of personification.
Before arriving in London, Jerónimo was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre Raymond Aron (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), a fellow of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate Programme at the University of Cologne, Germany, and a postdoctoral researcher at CONICET (National Research Council of Argentina).
As part of his British Academy Fellowship, Jerónimo is currently working on a book project—an intellectual history of how state power was depicted and justified in early modern times through personification, with a focus on both Europe and South America.
Major Publications
- ‘The Leviathan of the Pampas: Sarmiento’s Facundo as a Political Personification’, Global Intellectual History (forthcoming).
- ‘Are Hobbesian States as Passionate as Hobbesian Individuals?’, The Review of Politics (2023)
- ‘Hobbes and prosopopoeia', Intellectual History Review (2022)
- ‘Hobbes on rebellious groups', History of European Ideas (2021)
- ‘Et tu, Hobbe? Una incursión en el concepto de conspiración política', Isegoría (2021)
- ‘How natural is Hobbes’s natural person?’, History of Political Thought (2020)
Public engagement
Jerónimo has engaged with broad audiences through opinion pieces published in major Argentine newspapers and appearances on national radio to discuss political representation. He has also delivered talks at two Marie Skłodowska-Curie events in Paris focused on science funding policy.
His professional background includes political communication, having served as a speechwriter for the Communications Office of the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers of Argentina (2020–2022).
