Linda Colley

Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University

Linda Colley holds a BA in History from Bristol University and earned her MA and Ph.D. at
the University of Cambridge. She taught at the latter institution until 1981 and then moved
to Yale University, where she became a university professor. From 1997 to 2003, she was
a research professor at the London School of Economics, moving to her present position in
2003. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, a member
of the Academia Europaea, and has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire
for her services to history. She holds five honorary degrees.

Colley’s books include In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714–1760 (1982); Namier
(1989); Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (1992); Captives: Britain, Empire and the
World, 1600–1850 (2002); The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History (2007);
and Acts of Union and Disunion (2014). The last-mentioned book was based on fifteen lectures
she delivered on BBC Radio 4 in advance of the Scottish independence referendum and the EU/
BREXIT referendum. Her work has been translated into eleven languages.

Colley has organized major exhibitions at the British Library in London and is a member of the
Research Board of the British Museum and the Research Committee of the New York Public
Library. She occasionally writes for the London Review of Books, the New York Review of
Books and the Financial Times. In addition to her Fellowship at SCAS, she currently also
holds a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

At SCAS, Colley will be completing a book on war and the making of constitutions since 1750.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2017-18.