Charles Clavey is a lecturer on social studies at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in history in 2019. Prior to coming to Harvard, Charles earned his B.A. in political science from Columbia University (2010) and an M.Phil. in history, specifically political thought and intellectual history from Cambridge University (2011), where he was the Euretta J. Kellett Fellow.
A specialist in 19th- and 20th-century intellectual history, he studies the intersection of the
social sciences and political thought in European and transatlantic contexts.
His research interests include the histories of philosophical concepts,
social-scientific knowledge, political culture, and subjectivities and
emotions. He is currently preparing a manuscript, tentatively entitled
Experiments in Theory: Empirical Social Science at the Frankfurt School, that
recovers the long-neglected role of the social sciences – from cultural
anthropology to industrial sociology – in the development of critical theory. A
second research project traces the emergence and transformation of the concept
of “authoritarianism” across the 20th century. In addition to this
historical research, Clavey is interested in methodological and philosophical
debates within the social sciences. His work has appeared in Modern Intellectual
History, The Los Angeles Review of Books, New Rambler Review, and The Chronicle
of Higher Education.
At the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, he co-chairs the Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History and the Thesis Workshop for Juniors.
This information is accurate for the time period that the scholar is affiliated with CES.
