Professor Lynn Hunt FBA

French Revolution of 1789; historical methods and epistemology; cultural history; human rights

Elected 2014

Image of Lynn Hunt looking at the camera while sitting at her desk
Fellow type
International Fellow
Year elected
2014

Lynn Hunt has her BA from Carleton College (1967) and her PhD (1973) from Stanford University and is now Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA. Before going to UCLA as Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History (1998-2013) she taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1987-1998) and UC Berkeley (1974-1987).

She has authored, co-authored or edited books on the origins of human rights, the French Revolution, historical method and epistemology, time in history, the 18th-century sources of religious toleration as well as the history of pornography and has co-authored widely used textbooks on western civilisation and the French Revolution. Her books have been translated into fourteen languages. Her most recent book, History: Why It Matters, was published by Polity Press in 2018.

She was President of the American Historical Association in 2002 and awarded the Nancy Lyman Roelker Award for graduate mentorship by the American Historical Association in 2010. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the American Philosophical Society.

Current post

Distinguished Research Professor, University of California at Los Angeles

Publications

Writing History in the Global Era 2014

Inventing Human Rights: A History 2007

The Book that Changed Europe 2010

Telling the Truth About History 1994

Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution 1984, 2004

The Family Romance of the French Revolution 1993

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