Gio Maria Tessarolo

I grew up in a small town in Veneto, in the north-east of Italy. I then studied Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa) While attending it, I also received BA and MA degrees from the University of Pisa and spent one year as an Affiliate Student at UCL (London). I am now a PhD student in Political Theory at UC Berkeley, where my studies are funded by the Berkeley Fellowship.

I am interested in the history of early modern and modern political thought and their relationship with contemporary political philosophy (especially republicanism and liberalism). I am currently working on a dissertation on the politics of vice, tracing its history from Machiavelli to the mid-eighteenth-century and developing its implications for contemporary political theory and political science. My research has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including The American Political Science ReviewHistory of Political Thought, The Historical Journal, Rivista di storia della filosofiaStudi storici, and Rinascimento, as well as in a number of edited volumes I am also fascinated by methodological issues in the history of political thought and by interdisciplinary approaches to its study. 

Recent articles: 

'Jean Bodin's Demonic Constitutionalism: Sovereignty, Natural Law, and Political Theology', American Political Science Review, FirstView (with Eero Arum).

- 'The Politics of societas and the Early Modern State', The Historical Journal, 68 (2), 2025, pp. 308-328.

'Full of Contradiction, or Confusion, or Both': Rethinking the Political Thought of Robert Filmer', History of Political Thought, 45 (2), 2024, pp. 257-281.

'Fra tradizione e mito. Limiti e prospettive del paradigma repubblicano', Studi storici, 64 (4), 2023, pp. 781-812.