Gregory Claeys

Gregory Claeys (born 18 August 1953) is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of London, but remains a student of history. He gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he studied at Jesus College, and was a Junior Research Associate (1981–83) at King's College, working on the "Political Economy and Society" project. From 1982 to 1987 he taught British and American studies at Universität Hannover (now Leibniz University Hannover) in Hannover, then West Germany. Then he was Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. From 1992-2020 he was Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. His interests are the history of radicalism and socialism in 19th century Britain, utopianism 1700–2100, Social Darwinism and Eugenics, and British intellectual history c. 1750 to the present.[1] From the beginning of his career his research interests have focused chiefly upon the theory and practice of sociability. His main concern now is catastrophic environmental destruction, and how to avoid it. He has lectured widely, including (2011, 2018) at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Oxford Literary Festival, in 2016 at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, and in 2018-19 at similar events at Winchester, Chichester and Lewes. He gave a TEDx talk entitled "My Road to Utopia" (now retitled) at Linz in 2019. In 2016 he commenced, as editor, the series, "Palgrave Studies in Utopianism" (Palgrave-Macmillan).