Dr Sophie Nicholls

I work in the history of ideas, specialising in the Early Modern era. I read Ancient and Modern History as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, which has  informed my ongoing interest in the reception of classical ideas in the Renaissance. I did my MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History, and PhD, at the University of Cambridge. After this I returned to Oxford as the Carlyle/Clayman Junior Research Fellow in the History of Political Thought. Since then I have worked and taught in Oxford as a College Lecturer. 

My first monograph, Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion (CUP 2021), explores the role of the Catholic League in French political polemic post the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572) and repositions this movement at the centre, rather than the fringes, of political thinking in this era. 

Since completing this book, I have continued to think about how best to understand and analyse the ever-shifting political thought of Renaissance and Reformation. This is the subject of my most recent article: 'Palimpsestic political thought: The intellectual impact of the French succession crisis, 1584', History of European Ideas 50:4 (2024), 573-590. I have a chapter forthcoming in the Cambridge History of Rights (eds. A. Fitzmaurice and R. Hammersely) and am currently writing chapters for two Oxford Handbooks, in the History of Political Thought and the French Wars of Religion. 

My current research project is on Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563). I am producing the first English translation of his Mémoire sur les pacification des troubles (1561) in a critical edition, alongside his renowned treatise De la Servitude Volontaire (On Voluntary Servitude). This is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, in the ‘Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought’ series. This project forms the basis of my next book, which will be an intellectual history of La Boétie.

I am also writing a trade publication on the French Wars of Religion for Head of Zeus/Bloomsbury Press.