Dr Jessica Patterson

BA, MA (Queen Mary University of London), PhD (Manchester)

Director of Studies, Postgraduate Mentor

College Roles

• Director of Studies in History & Politics
• Postgraduate Mentor

University Roles

• University Assistant Professor in the History of Political Thought

Contact

Email: jemp3@cam.ac.uk

Biography

Dr Jessica Patterson is a researcher in the field of intellectual history. She lectures on the history of political thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

She took her first degree in History at the University of Cambridge, and went on to complete an MA in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at University College London and Queen Mary University of London. Her AHRC funded PhD was completed at the University of Manchester, where she was a President’s Doctoral Scholar.

Prior to joining the History Faculty at Cambridge in 2020, she lectured at Queen Mary and King’s College London.

Research Interests

Dr Jessica Patterson’s research is concerned with political ideas and intellectual culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. She is particularly interested in the enlightenment, empire and radical thought. Her first book (forthcoming with the Cambridge University Press series, Ideas in Context) is focused on the thought of East India Company servants, and their intellectual engagement with Indian philosophy and religion. She is currently pursuing a new research project on the impact of the turn to empire in shaping British radical political thought in the 1780s-1830s.