Amy Chandran

Amy Chandran will be Assistant Professor of Humanities starting in Fall 2024. She previously served as a policy advisor to multiple Australian prime ministers and has taught at both Brandeis and Harvard. Chandran’s research spans historical and contemporary political philosophy, including questions of right, power, obligation, freedom, religion and the institutional underpinnings of democracy. More broadly she is interested in classical and early modern ideas of honor, authority, obedience and legitimacy, as well as the psychological dynamics that mediate individual experiences of political agency and community. She has published articles in Modern Intellectual History, The Review of Politics and Hobbes Studies.

Current Project

Chandran’s current book project, Mortal God: The Religious Imagination and the Making of Leviathan, examines the writings of Thomas Hobbes, and especially his most famous work, Leviathan. Mortal God will re-evaluate Hobbes’s contributions to political concepts such as equality, representation, power and honor, in light of the historical and religious analysis offered in Leviathan’s second half.

Courses

• Special Topics: The Politics of Nature

Education

• Ph.D. in Government, Harvard University, 2023
• M.P.P., John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2016
• Graduate Certificate in Economic Policy, Australian National University, 2014
• B.A. in Laws (First Class Honours), Univeristy of Technology, Sydney, 2011

Publications - Articles

‘A “Divine Legislator” for the Leviathan? The Commonwealth by Institution and the Case of the Prudent Prophet’, History of European Ideas (forthcoming).

‘Transubstantiation, Absurdity and the Religious Imagination: Hobbes and Rational Christianity’, Hobbes Studies (May 2024), 1-31.

‘Hobbes in France, Gallican Histories and Leviathan’s Supreme Pastor’, Modern Intellectual History 20 (2023), 359–387.