Dr Samuel Zeitlin

Samuel Garrett Zeitlin is a Lecturer in Modern Intellectual History at University College London. 

Sam studies and teaches the history of political thought, the history of international relations, political philosophy, and intellectual history. His work on Francis Bacon examines the themes of war and peace in Bacon’s political philosophy. His work on Carl Schmitt has offered new interpretations of Schmitt on history, law and state theory. Sam’s translation and edition (co-edited with R.A. Berman) of Land and Sea won an award in the “Religion” category at the Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2016.  He is currently working on monographs on Bacon and Schmitt as well as articles and edited volumes on Hobbes and Nietzsche as well as on constitutions in the history of political thought.

Before joining the UCL History faculty, he taught courses at University of California-Berkeley, at the University of Chicago, at Queen Mary, University of London, at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen, and at the University of Cambridge, where Sam was a College Lecturer and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.

Major publications (since 2023)

• “Freedom, Intentionality, and the Classic,” History of European Ideas (2026, online first)
• “Carl Schmitt, Political Theology and the History of Political Thought,” in Ulrike Jureit and Patricia Chiantera-Stutte eds., Geo-Political Spaces. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Carl Schmitt (London: Routledge, 2026), pp. 59-71.
• (editor), C. Schmitt, State Composition and Collapse (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2026).
• (with Ashley Gorham), “‘If It’s a Lie, It Must Be Important’,” Polity 58:1 (January 2026), pp. 179-193.
• “Peace and Treaties in the Political Thought of Francis Bacon,” in Isabella Lazzarini, Luciano Piffanelli, Diego Pirillo eds., Reframing Treaties in the Late Medieval and Early Modern West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), pp. 378-395.
• “Eutopia of Empire: Francis Bacon’s Short View and the Imperial and Colonial Background to the New Atlantis,” Political Research Quarterly 76:2 (June 2023), pp. 1012-1023.
• (translator), Raymond Aron, Liberty and Equality (Princeton University Press, 2023).
• “Order and Command: On the Use of ‘Imperium’ in the Politica of Justus Lipsius,” in Political Science Reviewer 47:1 (2023), pp. 33-60.

Contact details

Email: s.zeitlin@ucl.ac.uk

Office: 312, 26 Gordon Square

Student support & feedback hours: Tuesdays 6.00 - 7.30pm (in-person in my office), drop-in or book by email. 

Student support & feedback hours are an opportunity for students to chat with their module tutors about their ideas, any support they might need with the module, and to go through feedback from their assessments. 

External roles:

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 2022

Qualifications:

PhD-University of California-Berkeley-2018