Paul Seaward writes on the political history and political thought of seventeenth century England, and more broadly on the history of political and parliamentary institutions. Until the end of 2023 he was director of the History of Parliament Trust, an independent research organization based in London; before that, from 1989 to 2001, he worked in the secretariat of the House of Commons. He has published an edition of Thomas Hobbes’s history of the English Civil War, Behemoth, in the Oxford edition of Hobbes’s works, and is, with Martin Dzelzainis, general editor of an edition of the works of the statesman and historian Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Clarendon was the subject of the Carlyle Lectures in the History of Political Thought that he delivered at the University of Oxford in early 2024, and which he is preparing for publication. He is currently working on a long-term history of Parliament in England/Britain/the United Kingdom which seeks to understand it through the history of ideas, society and institutions as well as political narratives. He is also involved in comparative studies of political assemblies in early modern Europe.

His proposed project at SCAS is designed to further develop the comparative element of his work on political assemblies in Europe, and to explore how traditions of assembly governance developed in different countries in dialogue with each other and within their varying institutional and social contexts.

Paul Seaward is in residence in the spring of 2026.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2025-26.