Professor Avi Lifschitz
Professor of Intellectual History and Enlightenment Studies
Magdalen College
The intellectual and cultural history of Europe in the long 18th century (ca. 1680-1815) is my main area of research. I am particularly interested in the links between Enlightenment political theory, the ‘science of man’, and theology. Other significant aspects of my work include translation and cross-cultural transfer in the 18th century.
In 2017 I joined the History Faculty and Magdalen College from UCL (University College London). I teach undergraduate and postgraduate modules, offer supervision at master’s and doctoral levels, and co-convene the Enlightenment Workshop research seminar. I am also involved in the activities of the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History, the Oxford Centre for European History, and the Voltaire Foundation (as Academic Programme Director).
I have held research fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Clark Library at UCLA, CRASSH at Cambridge, the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at the University of Göttingen, and the Enlightenment Research Centre at the University of Halle (IZEA). Other awards include grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the Thyssen Stiftung, as well as the 2020 James L. Clifford Prize of the American Society for 18th-Century Studies.
Having edited the first modern English edition of a wide range of writings by Frederick the Great (Princeton University Press, 2021), I now work on a monograph exploring the Prussian monarch’s roles as philosopher and public author. Edited/co-edited books include items on collaboration between Jewish and Christian Intellectuals in Berlin around 1800, on Lessing’s Laocoon, on different aspects of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work and its impact, and on 18th-century Epicureanism.
