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Departmental homepageDr Tomaselli is a historian of political theory. She studied Philosophy for her undergraduate degree, Social and Political Sciences for her master's, and History of Political Thought for her PhD. For many years she was the Sir Harry Hinsley Lecturer in History and a Tutor at St John's College, and in recent years has overseen postgraduate affairs for the College.
She teaches the History of Political Papers as well as Political Philosophy and Politics to undergraduates. She also supervises MPhil students in History of Political Thought, Early Modern History and Economic History. Her PhD students have researched a variety of subjects, such as the concept of citizenship, constitutional history and the idea of moderation, and authors, such as David Hume, Adam Smith, William Godwin, James Mill and Simone de Beauvoir.
She writes mostly, but not solely, on the political philosophy of the long 18th century (c.1688-1815). She is a translator and has published on a range of topics including John Locke, toleration, Constant, Max Weber, the history of woman, grand historical narratives, myth, friendship and rape.
Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics, Princeton University Press, 2021
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Edited by Sylvana Tomaselli, Cambridge: CUP, 1995 (1991, 2001)
'PEACE, GENDER, AND WAR' in A Cultural History of Peace in the Enlightenment (1648-1815) Stella Ghervas & David Armitage (eds.) Bloomsbury, 2020. ISBN 9781474241359
‘On labelling Raynal’s Histoire: reflections on its genre and subject’, in Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange, Cecil Courtney and Jenny Mander (eds.), special volume in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (2015 with the Oxford Studies on the Enlightenment (Voltaire Foundation, 2015) pp. 73-87. ISBN 9780729411691
