Bennett is a third year Ph.D. student working in the field of European intellectual history. Bennett is broadly concerned with the global proliferation of phenomenological and existential thought. To this end, Bennett is currently focusing on the intellectual history of late-colonial Indonesia and Netherlands New Guinea [West Papua / Irian Jaya], and how Dutch colonial administrators applied otherwise complex phenomenological ideas to maintain political authority during an era of worldwide decolonization.

Bennett has earned a BA in Politics at the University of York, as well as an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. While at York, Bennett was awarded the Adrian Leftwich Prize for studies in political theory. In 2023, Bennett achieved the runner-up award for the Charles Schmitt Intellectual History Prize for an essay on Ernst Kantorowicz's early years in the United States.

For the year 2024-2025, Bennett is a Center for Digital Humanities Fellow on the project “Marxism’s Marx”.

For prospective students interested in pursuing graduate study in modern European history, Ben will be very happy to answer any questions you have.

Publications

"The failures of political prophecy: Ernst Kantorowicz’s wartime lectures", Intellectual History Review, (2023), 1–20. [Published Online]