My research interests concern medieval Europe, particularly the history of late Anglo-Saxon England.

My research is primarily concerned with the economics of contracts, especially their implications for labour markets and the provision of health services. In these, as in many other services, important aspects such as the quality of service to be provided are often difficult to specify contractually in advance in a legally enforceable way. Two important issues then arise: (1) how best to structure the contract so that what the parties want is actually provided and (2) what the implications are for delivery of services. I have particular interest in the economics of relational contracts, on-going relationships in which not all contractual details are fully specified in advance in a legally enforceable way. These pervade economic life, especially employment and provision of complex services such as health care.

I have two main fields of interest in my current research: early modern intellectual history, with a special focus on the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679); and relations between Western Europe and the Ottoman/Islamic world in the early modern period. There is some overlap between the two, as the second field includes the development of Western thinking about such things as the nature of Ottoman rule and the doctrines of Islam. My recent publications include an essay on the treatment of those topics in the writings of Jean Bodin (1530-1596), and a study of the first English translation of the Koran (1649). But my interests on this side of my research extend beyond the realm of ideas. My latest book discusses East-West interactions on quite a broad scale in the second half of the sixteenth century, from Venice to Moldavia and Istanbul, encompassing such topics as diplomacy, espionage and galley warfare. My projects for the next few years include preparing another volume of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Hobbes (the autobiographical writings), and writing a book on the Ottoman Empire in Western political thought.

The general area of my research is the organization and transmission of knowledge in early modern Europe. This involves the history of philosophy (with special reference to Girolamo Cardano, Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes), the history of interpretation in the higher faculties (law, medicine, theology), and the economics and modalities of the book trade in learned books.  My present project is an extensive study of the last writings of Cardano which will include a partial edition of his final work, the De prudentia eximia et artificiosa.

My work has included matters such as the territorial status of and boundaries in the Caspian Sea; territorial conflicts in south-east Asia; rights of passage and navigation; jurisdictional questions in relation to competition laws; international law aspects of privatisation programmes; claims arising out of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq; Fisheries disputes; investment disputes; and various aspects of independence and statehood negotiations. Other consultancy work includes provincial/federal continental shelf disputes; international merger regulation; extraterritorial application of US export controls, antitrust and securities laws; extradition; claims to fisheries zones. I conducted reviews of environmental implications of defence projects and is a trainer on the law of the sea and the laws of war for naval officers.

Ian Loader is Professor of Criminology. He is also an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Ian is a Fellow of British Academy and the Royal Society for the Arts.

Ian is the author of numerous books, edited collections, theoretical and empirical papers, and works of public engagement on policing; private security; public sensibilities towards crime and justice; penal policy and culture; crime control and political ideologies, and the democratic purposes of criminology.

Ian's current work focuses of two projects, both of which are coalescing around aspects of environmental harm. He has recently completed fieldwork on a three-year study entitled ‘Place, crime and insecurity in everyday life’ funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and is now writing papers and a book based on the research.  The study – conducted with Evi Girling (Keele), Richard Sparks (Edinburgh) and Ben Bradford (UCL) – investigates how people living in one English town, Macclesfield in Cheshire, talk about and act towards a range of threats that they regard as impinging upon their safety (their personal bodily integrity, their property, their locality, their wider habitat). A theoretical prospectus for the study has been published in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology, in addition to papers in the British Journal of Criminology and Criminological Encounters. A summary of project findings can be found here. 

Ian is also developing a new line of research on criminology and the harms of automobility. A background article for this project has been published in the Annual Review of Criminology, as well as a brief paper on 15 minute cites and auto-freedom. The project seeks to use the car, and systems of automobility, as an object through which to explore what it means practice criminology in the midst of a climate breakdown. Further papers are planned. Ian is also teaching a new graduate seminar on ‘Criminology and the car’.

I continue to work in the field of development and reform of the institutions and operations of the European Union, with particular reference to the problems associated with Economic and Monetary Union and with their consequences and the potential long term effects if the United Kingdom were to secede from the European Union. The other topic that has principally engaged my attention has been the legal effects of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights on the procedures of the European Commission in cases relating to the grant of State aid by Member States.

My current research focuses on the intellectual history of the English Enlightenment and its nineteenth-century aftermath, particularly in fields such as antiquarianism, mythography and religious apologetic. Eventually, many years hence, these obsessions will intersect with an emerging interest in the history - and prehistory - of British anthropology. I am at my happiest riding these particular hobbyhorses, but I also have a stable of other subjects which fascinate me. These include constitutional theory, British as well as American, and the church history of my native county of Ayrshire in the age of Enlightenment. However, I am alert to the possibility that the parishes of eighteenth-century Fife might yield up treasures of their own to delight the connoisseur of theological controversy.