Join the Academy of American Civic Republicanism on Monday, October 5, at 1:30 p.m. in the UWF Conference Center for a book talk with Professor Max Skjönsberg of the University of Florida on his new book, The Spirit of the British Constitution: Parliamentary Reform from the Civil War to the Great Reform Act.

About the Talk

What does it mean to be free under a constitution? In this talk, Professor Max Skjönsberg will explore the ideas and political debates at the heart of his new book, The Spirit of the British Constitution. Tracing arguments over Parliament, representation, liberty, and constitutional reform from the English Civil War through the Great Reform Act of 1832, Skjönsberg examines how generations of political thinkers understood—and contested—the character of the British constitution.

The talk will consider how these debates shaped competing understandings of political liberty and constitutional government, while also highlighting connections to America and the ways British constitutional ideas informed political debates across the Atlantic. Together, these themes offer a broader historical perspective on enduring questions of representation, reform, and the relationship between political institutions and freedom.

About the Speaker

Max Skjönsberg is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He is a historian of political thought specializing in Britain and the Atlantic world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

He is the author of The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain and The Spirit of the British Constitution: Parliamentary Reform from the Civil War to the Great Reform Act. His scholarship examines political parties, constitutional thought, political economy, and debates over liberty and representation in early modern Britain.