Bio
Mark Gilbert is C. Grove Haines Professor
Professor of History and International Studies at SAIS Europe
Gilbert was educated (B.A. hons Politics, 1983) at Durham University and was awarded a PhD in contemporary history by the University of Wales (1990). Before joining SAIS, he was associate professor in contemporary history and international studies at the University of Trento and lecturer in European studies at the University of Bath. He began his academic career as assistant professor of political science at Dickinson College. Gilbert has been Associate Editor of the
Journal of Modern Italian Studies since 2015. He served as Chair of the
2018 Cundill Prize and as a member of the international jury for the 2025
Laura Shannon Prize. His latest book,
Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy (Penguin/Allen Lane, Rizzoli and W.W. Norton), was shortlisted for the
Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize in January 2025 and in October 2025 won the American Historical Association’s
Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian history or Italian-American relations.
Courses
- Intellectuals and Politics
This course deals with the role of the intellectual in world politics. It argues that the true intellectual is a moral gadfly: a voice of conscience that exposes the contradictions, hypocrisies, compromises and injustices of the social order. Intellectuals tell uncomfortable truths, although they do so in varying ways and use different means to their end. This is why the course contains different kinds of intellectual production: novels, memoirs, manifestoes, documentaries, propaganda, and philosophical essays are all represented here.
It is also at pains to underline the importance of intellectuals. None of the intellectuals here is an “ivory tower academic.” All of them exercised a distinct though not easily measurable impact on the history of our times.
- Beyond the Nation State
The aim of this course is to read several important texts in depth and to write about the themes and arguments they raise. All the texts discuss the tension between the rights of states and international limitations on sovereign power. The course shows how – at any rate in western eyes – the traditional notion of the Westphalian state was superseded by a liberal vision of the international order that prized the constraints placed on sovereign power by global markets, by moral concerns about the failure to respect human rights, and by the need to end global injustices.
This liberal vision of the world order has generated ‘atavistic impulses’ within the West itself (and, of course, criticism elsewhere in the world). The course will look at the specific case of the United States, though it is not a course about contemporary populism / nationalism.
The course will conclude with two rigorous academic seminars in which students present the research they have conducted during the term on topics connected with the course material. These will not be ‘presentations’ with bullet points, but carefully worked-out academic arguments.
The course, in short, is a preliminary reflection upon the historical development of the post-1945 world order. Doing the course presupposes some prior experience with political history, political theory, and the theory of IR.
