Back to top

Thomas Merrill Associate Professor Government

Additional Positions at AU
Associate Director, Political Theory Institute
Degrees
PhD, Duke University<br />
MA, Duke University<br />
AB, Fundamentals: Issues and Texts

Bio
Thomas Merrill is an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs. He is the author of Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2015), which won the Delba Winthrop Prize for Best Recent Work in Political Philosophy. He is also the co-editor of three edited volumes, including The Political Thought of the Civil War (University Press of Kansas, 2018) and has held fellowships from Harvard, Princeton, and the American Enterprise Institute. He was a senior research analyst for the President’s Council on Bioethics during the George W. Bush administration and is the associate director of the Political Theory Institute at American University, which has hosted many public intellectuals from across the political spectrum as well as many academic political theorists. He has served as coordinator of the undergraduate program in the Department of Government and, more recently, as department chair.
See Also
SPA Department of Government
SPA Political Theory Institute
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

Fall 2024

  • CORE-105 Complex Problems Seminar: The Examined Life

  • GOVT-211 Roots of Political Economy

  • SPA-096 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Practicing the Civic Life

Spring 2025

  • GOVT-212 Politics and Literature