Elena Yi-Jia Zeng specialises in modern political theory and European intellectual history. Her research addresses the epistemological and institutional factors that give rise to liberalism. In pursuing this line of inquiry, she investigates the role of scepticism in modern moral and political thought, focusing on Britain, France and Germany. Apart from canonical thinkers, she is interested in how leading cultural figures, such as Brahms, embodied liberal ideas to reconstruct the experiences and meanings of living in an age of liberalism.

Elena’s works have been published in peer-reviewed history, politics and philosophy journals. She is working on her first monograph The Politics of Belief in Enlightenment Scepticism and a new project on the debates over economic and civilisational stagnation from the time of the Physiocrats to the Austrian School.

Elena was elected an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2025. She spent a year at Princeton University Centre for Human Values as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Political Theory. She obtained her PhD and won the Prince Consort Prize & Seeley Medal for the Best Dissertation of the Year from the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge in 2024.

For more information, please visit Elena’s personal website. 

Research interests

• Political theory
• Intellectual history
• Political economy
• Political epistemology
• History of philosophy

Latest publications

Journal articles

‘The Role of Philosophy in Hume’s Critique of Empire’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 31:2 (2023), 136–57.

‘Empire and Liberty in Adam Ferguson’s Republicanism’, History of European Ideas, 48:7 (2022), 909–29.

‘The Role of Consent in Locke’s Theory of State’, Historical Inquiry: Journal of National Taiwan University, 66 (2020), 201–36.

Edited collection

Special issue ‘David Hume’s Political Epistemology’, Cosmos and Taxis, 12:1–2 (2024).

Review essays

‘Review: Richard Whatmore, The End of Enlightenment’, Society, 61 (2024), 732–5.

‘Review: Paul Russell, Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 22:3 (2024), 254–9.

‘The Multifaced Hume’, New History, 32:2 (2021), 331–42.

‘The Political Ideal of the Enlightenment in the American Revolution’, Intellectual History, 9 (2019), 491–506.

‘The Historical Depth of Ancient and Modern Political Thought’, New History, 30:1 (2019), 167–78.

‘A History of Scottish Philosophy’, National Taiwan University Philosophical Review, 56 (2018), 177–202.

Other writings

‘Hume and Rousseau on Liberty’, Liberty Matters series, Liberty Fund Online Library, 2024.

‘Scepticism from the Pyrrhonian Crisis to Hume’, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, 2021.