Dr Olivier Higgins

Olivier Higgins is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Enlightenment Studies at the Voltaire Foundation and a fellow of New College, Oxford. His research focuses on the political philosophy and far-reaching legacy of the Kantian Aufklärung, showing how Kant and his successors reimagined the idea of progress amidst the turmoil of the French Revolution and the ascent of new empires. Olivier completed his BA at Carleton University in his native Ottawa before coming to Cambridge for his MPhil and PhD research, which won the support of the Cambridge Trust, King’s College, the Centre for History and Economics (Cambridge) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA, Halle). In 2025 his PhD was awarded the Melvin Richter prize for the best doctoral dissertation in the History of Political Thought. He is currently adapting this work into a monograph entitled Progress and the People, 1781-1831.

Contact

olivier.higgins@new.ox.ac.uk

 

 

Publications

‘Kant on Peace, Honour and the “Point of View” of Princes, 1755-1795’,
in Modern Intellectual History 20/3 (2023), pp. 738-763.

 

‘Hegel on War and the Individuality of Nations’, in Hegel and the Hegelian Tradition in

Political Thought, eds. Douglas Moggach et al. (Oxford: OUP, under contract).

 

Progress and the People, 1781-1831 (monograph manuscript in preparation)

 

‘Fichte on Progress and the People after Enlightenment’

(Manuscript in Preparation)