Marta García-Alonso

Dr. Marta García Alonso | Associate professor

Marta García Alonso (Oviedo, 1972) holds a Ph.D. in philosophy ( UNED) and a B.A. in canon law ( UPCO). MA in Bioethics ( UNED) and MA in Neuroscience ( IAEU) Her research focuses mostly on the History of political ideas, with a sideline in Bioethics. She has been a visiting fellow at the Institut d'Études Politiques/CNRS-Université Bordeaux IV (1996), the Université Catholique de Louvain (1997), the École Pratique d’Hautes Études-Paris (1999, 2000), the Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation-Geneva (2001, 2005, 2006), the École Normale Supérieure-Lyon (2007-2008), the Maison française-Oxford (2012), the Centre for Ideas and Society/University of California-Riverside (2014) and the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (2017).

Brief Research Statement

I am a Historian of political ideas, focusing on French-speaking religious reformers and freethinkers of the 16th and 17th centuries. In my Ph.D Thesis and during the first part of my career I worked on the political theology of John Calvin, addressing it in the context of the Genevan Reformation. On the one hand, I discussed the sources of Calvin’s thought in medieval Catholic ecclesiology and canon law. On the other hand, I studied the Calvinist contribution to the modern concept of autonomy. In all my analyses, I make a point of studying concepts in their actual historical context. I have held pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, plus several visiting appointments, at major research centers in my field (Paris, Geneva, Lyon, Oxford, Rotterdam). I published in Spanish a reference research monograph on Calvin (Anthropos), plus an annotated version of his political writings (Tecnos). My major claims on Calvin have been published in English in French at leading journals in the field (History of Political Thought, History of European Ideas, Pensamiento, Intelectual History Review).

For the last five years, I have been working on the philosophy of Pierre Bayle, and in particular his views on political and religious tolerance. I study, on the one hand, how Bayle drew from contemporary debates on religion and politics and, on the other hand, I discuss the practical implications of Baylean views on tolerance.