Dr Eleanor Curran

Dr Eleanor Curran earned her PhD in Philosophy from the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1998. She was a Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at King’s College London from 1998-1999 and a Tutor there from 1997-2001. From 1999 to 2000 she was a Research Philosopher at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, investigating cognitive tasks for driving Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Systems.

Eleanor was a lecturer at Keele University’s School of Law and Centre for Professional Ethics from 2001 to 2006. She was a lecturer at Kent Law School, University of Kent, from 2006-2013 then senior lecturer until 2021. While teaching at KLS she developed one of the first undergraduate law courses on legal ethics and also developed a course on the origins and development of the idea of individual rights. Although she no longer teaches at Kent, she is still an active participant in the philosophical community.

Since her early work on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) systems, Eleanor’s main area of research has been the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, focusing particularly on his political theory. In 2007 she published a book on his theory of rights, Reclaiming the Rights of the Hobbesian Subject (Palgrave Macmillan 2007).

Eleanor is also interested in rights theory more generally and the history of rights theory. In 2022 she published a book on the history and philosophy of rights theory. Re-thinking Rights: Historical Development and Philosophical Justification (Lexington Books, 2022) The book provides a critical history of the development of the idea that individuals have rights, from its beginnings in the medieval period through theories of natural rights to modern jurisprudential rights theorising and the new philosophy of human rights.

Eleanor is currently working on a new biography of Thomas Hobbes, to be published by Reaktion Books.

Eleanor is also interested in political theory, moral theory, jurisprudence, early modern thought, legal ethics and medical ethics.

  Eleanor no longer teaches at the University of Kent.