Dr Nicholas Cole

nicholas.cole@history.ox.ac.uk

Dr Cole is a Senior Research Fellow and the Academic Director at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, and the director of the Quill Project (www.quill.pmb.ox.ac.uk), one of the College's research centres.  He studies American legal history, the development of modern political thought, the reception of the classics in the modern world, and the development of digital techniques and methods that can support humanities research. None of this is merely antiquarian interest: the debate over, 'what is the best form of government?' has reignited in recent years, and not everyone in the world agrees that the answer is liberal democracy with a strong protection of individual rights. Deepening our understanding the history of our institutions and the thinking that created them has never seemed more important.