Emile Chabal for The Age of Hobsbawm

Join us for an evening with Professor Emile Chabal, as he reflects on the life and intellect of one of the most influential historians of the modern world: Eric Hobsbawm.

Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) features among the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear writing, vast erudition and ability to make his Marxist analysis digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown.

Hobsbawm was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism, he was embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians, activists and fellow intellectuals across Europe, South Asia and the Americas, including Manmohan Singh, Che Guevara, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Fernand Braudel, E.P. Thompson, Arno Mayer and Salvador Allende. Emile Chabal traces the origins of Hobsbawm's ideas and most famous writings by exploring their scholarly foundations, delving deep into the archives to uncover hidden links and unexpected conversations which shaped his pathbreaking work.

Going well beyond the Ages series of modern history books for which Hobsbawm is best known, Professor Chabal offers the first substantial interpretation of Hobsbawm's entire corpus of writing. The Age of Hobsbawm is a trove of unique insights into the generations of Marxist writers with whom Hobsbawm was in conversation - authors whose work continues to shape global political debates today.

Emile Chabal is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Edinburgh. A prize-winning historian, he has taught and published widely on the history of global Marxism, the politics of France and Europe, and migration, immigration and state rationality. His previous publications include A Divided Republic: Nation, State, and Citizenship in Contemporary France (2015) and States of Ignorance: Governing Irregular Migrants in Western Europe (2024, edited with Christina Boswell), with other pieces appearing Foreign Policy, Times Literary Supplement and Jacobin. For almost a decade, he has been editor of Contemporary European History.