BECK, Naomi

Max Weber Fellow, 2009-2010

Research Fellow
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Studies
Vienna

Email naomi.beck@kli.ac.at  

 

 

 

 

 

 

My research focuses on the history of evolutionary theory in the broad cultural context with an emphasis on the relationship between evolutionary ideas and socio-political doctrines.

I obtained my Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Paris-1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) with a dissertation on “The Metamorphoses of Ideas: Spencer’s Evolutionary Theory and Left-Wing Politics in France and Italy,” which is currently being revised for publication as a monograph. My recent research project is a book-length study on the role of evolutionary ideas in Friedrich A. von Hayek’s defence of free market politics.

I held research fellowships at the Università di Bologna and at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, and am also the recipient of a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Konrad-Lorenz-Institut in Vienna, Austria.

As Assistant Professor at The University of Chicago (4-yr, non tenure-track contract) I taught a year-long survey course in intellectual history designed to examine the relationship of power to economics, politics and culture, with a specific emphasis on the theoretical foundations of capitalism and liberalism. I also taught advanced undergraduate courses on the ways in which various disciplines of the human and social sciences (psychology, sociology, ethics, politics, and economics) have used and continue to use evolutionary ideas.

I published articles in the Journal of the History of Biology, Science in Context, and the Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species (2008). 

For more information go to Beck Homepage