Monograph by Skytte Institute’s Professor of Political Theory is awarded several international book prizes

Eva Piirimäe’s monograph “Herder and Enlightenment Politics” has recently received several awards, the most prestigious being the István Hont Book Prize.  

Eva Piirimäe is Professor of Political Theory at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. Her research focuses on theories of sociability, patriotism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, self-determination of peoples, statehood, and peace in European intellectual history.  

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Piirimäe’s monograph “Herder and Enlightenment Politics” (published by Cambridge University Press in 2023) explores the evolution of Johann Gottfried Herder’s political thought in the context of pan-European philosophical debates.

In December 2024, the book received two important international accolades. The International Society of Intellectual History recently recognised the work by awarding Piirimäe the proxime accessit to Constance Blackwell Book Prize. Constance Blackwell (1934–2018) was an intellectual historian at the University of Oxford whose research focused on early modern natural philosophy. The prize is awarded for the best first monograph published in the previous two years. In particular, the panel noted “the scholarly care and elegance of the argument”. In communicating the message about the prize, Dr. Richard Oosterhoff wrote to Piirimäe: “We were extremely impressed by the breadth, ambition, and clarity of the book, and very much enjoyed reading it.”

Secondly, Piirimäe’s monograph was awarded the István Hont Book Prize by the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History. This prize is given annually to the best book published in intellectual history. “István Hont (1947–2013) was a historian of political thought at the University of Cambridge, whose highly original research on 17th–19th century political and economic thought has had a significant impact," explained Piirimäe. Hont's most famous work is Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Harvard: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). Piirimäe noted that the list of previous recipients is impressive, featuring in-depth intellectual biographies and wide-ranging studies of political ideas and ideologies. For Piirimäe, this award additionally holds a very special meaning, as Hont was the supervisor of her doctoral dissertation, which she defended at the University of Cambridge in 2006. The prize has been awarded since 2013.