Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner

Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner is the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and an intellectual historian. 

Skinner's historical research centers on the intellectual history of early-modern Europe.  One focus is on the Italian Renaissance.  Special interests include Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Milton.  His other main focus is on seventeenth century England.  Special interests here include the politics and political theory of the civil war period; the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

Skinner has also published on a number of philosophical themes, including the nature of interpretation and historical explanation, and on several issues in contemporary political theory, including the concept of political liberty and the character of the State. He has written extensively on the relations between rhetoric and philosophy, and have just completed a book on Shakespeare and forensic eloquence.  He has also published three books on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.  His best-known work, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, attempts to span the whole early-modern period.