Hugo Bonin

Hugo Bonin is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen Mary University of London's School of History, where he specializes in the transnational history of liberal democracy in Canada, France, and the UK during the 20th century. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Université Paris VIII and joined QMUL in 2020. His research focuses on theories and practices of democracy, conceptual history, and digital humanities.

His work examines the evolution of democratic ideas in British, French, and Canadian political thought, with a particular emphasis on the reception of Alexis de Tocqueville's writings and the ideological debates surrounding suffrage, socialism, and colonial governance. He employs mixed-methods approaches, including computational text analysis and archival research, to trace the semantic and discursive shifts in political terminology over time.

Key research themes include the conceptualization of democracy in 19th-century British socialist movements, the transatlantic reception of political ideas, and the historical semantics of terms like 'democracy,' 'people,' and 'liberalism.' He has also explored modern democratic institutions, such as direct democracy mechanisms in Switzerland and France's economic councils.

His publications analyze topics ranging from early 20th-century British antisuffragist rhetoric to the institutional borrowing of Swiss democratic tools by European parliaments. His writing style blends rigorous historical scholarship with accessible narratives, often addressing broader implications for contemporary democratic theory.

Outside academia, he enjoys mountaineering, which he humorously describes as a metaphor for seeking new perspectives—a theme mirrored in his research on scaling historical understanding through innovative methodologies.