ELENA YI-JIA ZENG

I joined the Faculty of History in 2020. Supervised by Professor Richard Bourke FBA, my doctoral thesis 'The Politics of Belief in Hume and Enlightenment Scepticism' looks into the nature and status of belief in Hume’s religion, morality and politics as well as his place in the sceptical tradition from Pierre Bayle to the Kant-Jacobi debate. I am particularly interested in the question of how epistemic and ideational factors may influence political judgement and public opinion from a sceptic's perspective.

I was elected as a Postgraduate Member of the Royal Historical Society in 2022. Before Cambridge, I obtained the MA in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at Queen Mary University of London and University College London in 2019 with Distinction. My MA dissertation investigated the Scottish responses to the American Revolution in the context of the early modern debates over the republican dilemma of empire and liberty. In 2018, my BA dissertation won the best undergraduate research award in Taiwan.