UF’s Hamilton School announces major faculty expansion

The University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education has hired 20 new faculty members, marking a significant milestone in the school’s rapid growth and evolution from an academic center into a full-fledged school.

The new faculty bring expertise spanning disciplines including political science, history, literature, economics, international relations and philosophy — strengthening the school’s mission to promote rigorous scholarship and shape leaders committed to the principles of a free society.

With these additions, the Hamilton School now has 53 faculty members. In addition, the latest numbers show 1,340 students enrolled at Hamilton with 1,500 expected by the beginning of the fall semester.

“The Hamilton School is moving forward at lightning speed to hire top-flight faculty who are providing an outstanding educational experience for our students,” said Mori Hosseini, UF Board of Trustees chair. “The University of Florida is leading the way in creating a model of classical education that other institutions will soon be emulating.”

“We’re delighted to attract yet more world-class faculty to UF as we build out the Hamilton School,” said Robert G. Ingram, the Hamilton School’s interim director. “This latest cohort of faculty, including Harvard’s Jim Hankins, helps us both deepen and expand our curricular offerings for UF undergraduate and graduate students.”

“With these new hires, Hamilton cements its standing as one of the best places in the world to study the principles, ideals and institutions of Western and American civilization,” Ingram said. “We’re thrilled to welcome these new faculty to UF.” 

The Hamilton School’s new faculty members are:

• Madeleine Armstrong, assistant professor (Ph.D., Cambridge): Historian of Enlightenment political thought with a particular interest in Edmund Burke. She has published her work in leading journals, including History of European Ideas. Prior to her appointment at the Hamilton School, Armstrong was the Thomas W. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow with the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and a lecturer in the School of Government at Oxford University. 
  
  
• Jeremy Bailey, professor (Ph.D., Boston College): Scholar of American political thought and constitutional development, especially the ideas of the American Founding and Early Republic as well as constitutional controversies concerning executive power. He has written several books, including James Madison and Constitutional Imperfection (Cambridge University Press) and Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power (Cambridge University Press). He previously held the Sanders Chair in Law and Liberty and directed the Institute for American Constitutional Heritage at the University of Oklahoma. 
  
  
• Stephen Buono, assistant professor (Ph.D., Indiana): Historian of international relations and science and technology, with a particular focus on spaceflight. He most recently served at the University of Chicago as a faculty member and Harper & Schmidt Fellow. He has published two books, The Province of All Mankind: How Outer Space Became American Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press) and Governing the Moon: A History, as well as numerous articles and book chapters for both scholarly and popular audiences.
  
  
• Cole Bunzel, assistant professor (Ph.D., Princeton): Historian of the Middle East specializing in the history of Saudi Arabia, Islamic theology and law and modern Islamic radicalism. He is currently a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of Wahh?bism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement (Princeton University Press) and has written widely on Middle Eastern politics and Sunni jihadism, including for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He will join the Hamilton School faculty in the academic year 2026–2027.
  
  
• Steven Frankel, Robert M. Beren Professor of Jewish Civilization (Ph.D., University of Chicago): Political philosopher with a focus on the relationship between philosophy and religion. His publications include Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy, Equality and Excellence, and the forthcoming Commerce and Character: The Political Economy of the Enlightenment and the American Founding. His work has appeared in journals such as The Review of Politics, Interpretation and The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy. He previously served as the Smith Professor of Political Economy and Executive Director of the Stephen S. Smith Center at Xavier University.
  
  
• Samuel Goldman, associate professor (Ph.D., Harvard): Political theorist who focuses on religious sources of American national identity and on conservatism in American intellectual life. He has authored two books: After Nationalism: Being American in a Divided Age and God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (both with University of Pennsylvania Press). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and many other publications. He previously was Associate Professor of Political Science and the Executive Director of the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom and Democracy at George Washington University. 
  
  
• James Hankins, professor (Ph.D., Columbia): Eminent Renaissance scholar and longtime faculty member at Harvard University, where he has been a professor of history for most of his career. He has written or edited many books, including the forthcoming textbook on Western Civilization, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, co-authored with Hamilton Professor Allen C. Guelzo. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Hamilton School and will start full-time in summer 2026.
  
  
• Adela Halo, assistant professor (Ph.D., University of London): Legal and political theorist who focuses on the constitutional debates during the French Revolution. Her research explores the constitutional thought of Germaine de Staël, particularly her ideas on legislative and executive powers, public opinion and the role of religion in buttressing republican institutions. She previously served as Lecturer at University College London.
  
  
• Mitchell Harvey, assistant professor (Ph.D., Stanford): Economist specializing in political economy and economic history. He combines historical scholarship and archival sources with modern empirical and theoretical methods to explore the interplay between economic conditions, institutions and political behavior. 
  
  
• Patrick Hulme, assistant professor (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego; J.D., UCLA): Political scientist whose work focuses on congressional-executive relations in U.S. foreign policy. His research and teaching interests include congressional-executive debates over the use of force, constitutional law, deterrence theory and the U.S.-China relationship. He has previously served as a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. 
• Robert Kaminski, assistant professor (Ph.D., University of Chicago): American economic historian who has previously taught courses in economics, history, and political theory at the University of Chicago, Drew University and the University of Georgia. Kaminski’s research explores the relationship between business, labor and the American state.
  
  
• Howell Keiser, assistant professor (Ph.D., Louisiana State University): Historian of the nineteenth-century United States with a focus on the Civil War Era, the U.S. South and slavery. He previously edited the Civil War Book Review and taught at the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia. 
  
  
• Jason Kelly, associate professor (Ph.D., Cornell): International relations scholar with a focus on modern China and East Asia, with an emphasis on U.S.-China relations, Chinese trade, security, and diplomacy and East Asian international relations. He was previously an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College, a senior lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University and a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard. Prior to academia, he was a U.S. foreign service officer and worked in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
  
  
• Geoffrey Kirsch, assistant professor (Ph.D., Harvard; J.D., Harvard Law): Scholar of American literature. He studies the intersection of American literature and legal, economic, and political history. He is currently a Junior Research Fellowship in English at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he worked as a law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and practiced appellate and corporate litigation in Boston before returning to academia. He will join the Hamilton School faculty in the academic year 2026-2027. 
  
  
• Yujie Li, assistant professor (Ph.D., University of Chicago): Historian of modern China. Her research explores labor, technology and political economy in China since the late nineteenth century, with a focus on Maoist China. Prior to joining the Hamilton faculty, she was assistant professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her work has appeared in Technology and Culture, Twentieth Century China and Artefact.
  
  
• Matt Lowenstein, assistant professor (Ph.D., University of Chicago; M.B.A., Columbia): Scholar of Chinese economic history and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Lowenstein previously worked as a securities analyst in China, where he covered the financial and shadow-banking sectors. He will join the Hamilton School faculty in the academic year 2026-2027.
  
  
• Katie Marshalek, assistant professor (Ph.D., Vanderbilt): Historian of early modern Britain and Europe. Her research is focused on the effects of religious pluralism both within and between states in Europe after the legal and doctrinal Reformation of the mid-sixteenth century. Her work has appeared in The English Historical Review, Historical Research and Renaissance Quarterly.
   
• Andrew A. Michta, professor (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins): Scholar of international relations. His previous roles include Dean of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and professor of political science at Rhodes College. He comes to Hamilton from the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, where he was Senior Fellow in the GeoStrategy Initiative. He has authored or edited numerous books on NATO, European security and post-communist Europe, including The Limits of Alliance and The Future of NATO. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has held fellowships and academic posts at Harvard, the Naval War College, the Wilson Center and elsewhere.
  
  
• Giulia Ricca, assistant professor (Ph.D., Columbia): Literary scholar whose work focuses on European novels. She is the author of Epifania Italiana, I classici di Joyce (Italian Epiphany: Joyce’s Classics), as well as several articles and book chapters on twentieth-century Italian poetry, modern non-fiction, the essayistic tradition and recent developments in literary criticism. She previously served as a preceptor in Columbia’s Great Books Core Curriculum.
  
  
• Mark Power Smith, assistant professor (Ph.D., University College London): Political and intellectual historian of nineteenth-century American history. His first book, Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War (University of Virginia Press), examines how a coalition known as “Young America” reshaped ideas about American nationalism during the middle of the nineteenth century. Previously, he was a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute.