Dr. Sophie Smith

Biography

Sophie Smith is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford, where she also serves as a Tutorial Fellow at University College. Her research primarily focuses on the history of political thought, with significant interests in early modern political ideas and twentieth century intellectual history, particularly the history of feminist politics and political theory. Smith has extensively written about the history of European ideas on empire, state, citizenship, and slavery, while exploring the connections between philosophy and imaginative literature in the early modern period, especially in relation to Aristotle's Politics and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Currently, she is editing a volume on the Cambridge History of Democracy, 1200-1800, and is working on a project that intersects feminist theory with political theory, drawing on unpublished archival materials to examine the responses of feminist authors in the twentieth century to work and social reproduction. Furthermore, she has engaged with historiographical debates in political philosophy and is an Executive Editor for the Journal of the History of Ideas, the longest-running journal in intellectual history. In her role, she supports graduate students and post-docs in preparing their manuscripts for submission. She will be leaving teaching responsibilities in 2026 to focus on her research.

Research Interests