Iain Hampsher-Monk studied PPE (University of Keele) and with Bernard Crick at the University of Sheffield. He joined the University of Exeter in 1971, where he was appointed Professor of Political Theory in 1995, and head of department (1996-2000). He has held visiting posts in St Louis, the Netherlands, and Ljubljana. He was twice RAE panellist (2004, 2008); and convened the Political Thought Conference (UK) 2006-12) He founded (1980) with Janet Coleman the Journal History of Political Thought which he still edits; is author of the PSA prizewinning History of Modern Political Thought (Blackwell, 1994); and has recently edited Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (CUP). His substantive research includes over fifty articles and chapters on writers, concepts and issues in the History of Political Thought, together with an interest in the role played by rationality as an explanatory and interpretive concept in both historical and political science explanations.