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Peter's main research interests are in the cultural and intellectual history of the Middle East in the long nineteenth century. He is also interested in global history and histories of capitalism, and in the place of the Middle East within wider historical processes.

Peter's monograph, published in 2020, is a study of the Arab literary and cultural 'revival' (Nahda), looking at the earlier phase of the movement in the 1830s-1870s. The book places the utopian imaginings of Arab intellectuals, in Beirut, Cairo, and Aleppo, within the contexts of expanding capitalism and the building of modern states. Peter has also published articles on literary aspects of the Nahda movement in journals such as PMLA and the Journal of Arabic Literature.

A related strand of his research is on the history of political ideas and forms in the Arab-Ottoman world, and their relationships with European and global trends in the 'age of revolutions' and mid-nineteenth century 'age of capital'. He has published articles on these themes in Past and Present and the Journal of Global History. He currently runs a collaborative research network on 'Reframing the Age of Revolutions'.

Peter has an interest in collaborative research into global history and histories of capitalism, which he has pursued through the Political Economy and  Culture in Global History project. He co-edited a virtual issue of Past and Present on 'Capitalism in Global History', which emerged from these discussions.

Peter's major project at present explores the changing notations of reason and religion in the nineteenth-century Arab-Ottoman world, via a microhistorical study of a Syrian notable and polymath and his changing religious views. This builds, in part, on his earlier work on the first translations into Arabic of European Enlightenment literature. He is a member of the British Society for Middle East Studies (BRISMES) and the Raymond Williams Society.

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Utopia and utopian writing in Arabic, Hill, P. 30 Nov 2023, The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More’s Utopia, Oxford, Oxford University Press
  • Mount Lebanon and Greece: Mediterranean Crosscurrents, 1821-1841, Hill, P. 7 Jan 2022, In: Historein
  • Asad Rustum and the Egyptian Occupation of Syria (1831-1841): Between Narratives of Modernity and Documentary Exactitude, Hill, P. 9 Dec 2021, In: Philological Encounters
  • How Global Was the Age of Revolutions? The Case of Mount Lebanon, 1821, Hill, P. 1 Mar 2021, In: Journal of Global History
  • Capitalism in Global History, Edwards, A., Hill, P., Neves-Sarriegui, J. Nov 2020
  • Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda, Hill, P. 16 Jan 2020
  • When the statues went up: History Workshop, Hill, P. 12 Jun 2020
  • Translation and the Globalisation of the Novel: Relevance and Limits of a Diffusionist Model, Hill, P. 1 May 2019, Migrating Texts, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press
  • The Arabic Adventures of Télémaque: Trajectory of a Global Enlightenment Text in the Nahdah, Hill, P. 4 Sep 2018, In: Journal of Arabic Literature
  • Arguing with Europe: Eastern Civilization versus Orientalist Exoticism, Hill, P. 22 Mar 2017, In: PMLA

Andrew Peak 'The word ‘Bolshevik’ does not need to be translated anywhere in the world': International communist debates in the Turkish context, 1918-1932 Start Date: 01/10/2023

  • DPhil June 01 2016
  • MSt June 20 2012
  • BA (Hons) June 20 2010
  • Associate Fellow (AFHEA) Higher Education Academy (HEA) 2019

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