I received my PhD in European History from the University of Chicago, where I specialized in the French Enlightenment and the Revolutionary period. As a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia I worked for two years on early twentieth-century thought, with a focus on theology, history, and political theory in Britain, Germany, and France. Since coming to Berkeley in 1999, I have been working on two main research tracks: one on the history of legal and political ideas, and the other on the relationship between technology, science, and the history of human cognition.