Professor Ian Maclean

MA, DPhil, FBA, FRHistS, Officier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Member of Academia Europaea

History

Emeritus Fellow since 2015

I am an Emeritus Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (elected 1995), Emeritus Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Oxford, and Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews since 2018. I was previously Fellow and Praelector in French at the Queen’s College, Oxford (elected 1972: Supernumerary Fellow since 1996). I have held visiting positions in France, Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the USA. My research interests range from the history of women and the history of philosophy to the history of interpretation and diagnosis in law and medicine and the history of the book. I have written extensively on Michel de Montaigne and Girolamo Cardano, whose intellectual biography I am in the process of completing.

Links

Email: ian.maclean@all-souls.ox.ac.uk

Research Areas

Early Modern Intellectual History

History of Medicine

History of the Book (manuscript and Print)

Cardano

Montaigne

History of Medicine

Law and Theology

History of Interpretation

Selected Publications

Episodes in the life of the early modern learned book

Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021

[ed., with Dmitri Levitin] Classical reception in early modern Europe: comparative perspectives

Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021

‘The other philology: resolving doubts about textual meaning in early modern law and theology’

The marriage of philology and scepticism: uncertainty and conjecture in early modern scholarship and thought, ed. Gian Mario Cao, Anthony Grafton and Jill Kraye, London, Warburg Institute, 2019, pp. 27-46

‘Sacrobosco at the book fairs, 1576-1624: the pedagogical marketplace’

Publishing Sacrobosco’s “De Sphaera” in early modern Europe: modes of material and scientific exchange, ed. Matteo Valleriani and Andrea Ottone, Springer, 2022, pp. 187-224

‘The social status of publishers in Europe, 1560-1630’

The relation of literature and learning to social hierarchy in early modern Europe, ed. Neil Kenny, London: British Academy, 2022, pp. 97-120

‘Strictum ius: legalism in early modern continental civil law’

Glossae, 20 (2023), 355-77

Background

Honorary Professor, University of St Andrews (2018)
Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College (from 2015)
Fellow Librarian, All Souls College (from 1998 to 2015)
Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College (from 1996 to 2012)
Lecturer, then ad hominem Reader, University of Oxford, Praelector in French, and Fellow of Queen’s College (from 1972 to 1996)
Lecturer, Department of French, University of Leeds (from 1969 to 1972)
British Institute, Paris (from 1967 to 1968)
Undergraduate and Postgraduate (Senior Scholar), Wadham College, Oxford (from 1963 to 1969)

Membership and Roles

Lyell Readership in Bibliography, University of Oxford (2010)
Directeur d’Etudes invité, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris (2007)
George Parker Winship Lecturer, Harvard University (2006)
Professeur invité, Collège de France (2005)
Member, Advisory Committee, Warburg Institute (from 2003 to 2009)
Joint General Editor, Oxford-Warburg Studies (1999)
Visiting Fellow, Council of the Humanities, University of Princeton (1996)
Member of the Wissenschaftlicher Beirat, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (from 1996 to 2005)
Visiting Fellow, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (1995, 2006)
Member, Committee of the Maison Française, Oxford (from 1994 to 2014)
Director, the European Humanities Research Centre, Oxford (from 1994 to 1996)
Eberard L. Faber Class of 1915 Memorial Lecturer, University of Princeton (1994)
Distinguished Visiting Scholar, CRRS, University of Toronto (1994)
Visiting Professor, Catholic University of Nijmegen (1993)
Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, A.N.U., Canberra, Australia (1983)

Recent Publications

• ‘Degrés de certitude: Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes’, Montaigne Studies, 26 (2014), 207-24
• {ed., with Arthur de Weduwen and Barnaby Cullen,] Early Modern Publishers, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025