In recognition of Gregory M. Collins’ outstanding research in the fields of ethics, politics and economics, the Acton Institute will be awarding him the 2020 Novak Award.
Gregory M. Collins is a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in the program on ethics, politics, and economics at Yale University. His book on Edmund Burke’s economic thought, Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020 and has already garnered significant attention inside and outside the academic community. Topics of his recently published or forthcoming articles include Burke, Adam Smith, Leo Strauss, Britain’s East India Company, and Frederick Douglass. They have been or will be published in the Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, American Political Thought, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Slavery & Abolition, and Perspectives on Political Science. His current book project is a comparative study of Burke and the Enlightenment.
The Acton Institute’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, reviewed Collins’ book on Burke earlier this year for Law & Liberty, praising its scholarship:
Refreshingly devoid of ideological agendas, Collins refrains from trying to shove Burke’s economic ideas into contemporary categories. The result is the definitive account of Burke’s economic thought, one which shows how Burke’s political economy displays “an underlying coherence that incorporated elements of prudence, utility, and tradition.”
It is precisely this sort of deep, balanced, and wide-ranging scholarship – which is sensitive to both freedom and virtue – which the Novak Award seeks to recognize.
We congratulate Collins and look forward to following his work in the future.
Read the full press release here.
