Adela Halo

Adela Halo is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School. Halo is a modern intellectual historian with a particular interest in the French Revolution and its impact on European thought in the ‘long’ nineteenth century and beyond. Her research to date has centered on Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), an influential but overlooked figure of the French Revolution who cast a long shadow over nineteenth-century European politics and ideas. Broadly, Adela is interested in ideas of democracy, equality, liberty, crisis, corruption, and order during the 18th and 19th centuries. She was previously a lecturer in the history of political thought at University College London (2020-2024) where she taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on democracy and political thought from the ancients to the moderns.

Current Project

Halo is currently completing her first monograph. Titled God and Liberty: The Moral and Political Thought of Germaine de Staël, the book will provide the first complete examination of the moral and political thought of Germaine de Staël that covers her entire body of work and her legacy. More specifically, the book examines Staël’s ideas on legislative and executive powers, representative government, public opinion, and the link between religion, mores, and political order. By recovering religion as central to Staël’s idea of human advancement and political order, the book subverts assumptions on the secular nature of the Enlightenment and of Staël as a liberal thinker, portraying a much more original and nuanced thinker on all these counts than has been previously thought.

She is also translating and preparing a critical edition of Staël’s political writings from the 1790s.

Courses

• Liberty and Order

Education

• Ph.D. in Law, Queen Mary University of London
• M.A. in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History, Queen Mary University of London and University College London
• B.A. in Political Science and International Relations, University of New York in Tirana / SUNY

Publications - Articles

‘A Reformation to End the Revolution: Germaine de Staël and the Struggle for Republican Mores under Directory France’, History of European Ideas, published online on 27 August 2024.