Joshua Derman received his Ph.D. in modern European history from Princeton University, and his A.B. in philosophy from Harvard University. Prior to joining HKUST, he was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

Professor Derman's research focuses on modern German history, and, in particular, the international dimensions of German political and social thought. His book, Max Weber in Politics and Social Thought: From Charisma to Canonization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), is the first comprehensive history of Weber’s early impact in Germany and the United States.

His current research project, supported by a two-year grant from the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, concerns the history of German international law and international thought. He has recently taught courses on European and world history, fascism and totalitarianism, and the social theory of capitalism.

Research Interests

Modern European history; history of political and social thought; world history

Representative Publications

Max Weber in Politics and Social Thought: From Charisma to Canonization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, “Ideas in Context” series, 2012).

“Prophet of a Partitioned World: Ferdinand Fried, ‘Great Spaces,’ and the Dialectics of Deglobalization, 1929–1950,” Modern Intellectual History, forthcoming.

Max Weber and the Idea of the Occident,” in The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber, ed. Edith Hanke, Lawrence A. Scaff, and Sam Whimster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 519–33.

“Modern Imperialism and International Law: Carl Schmitt and Ernst Rudolf Huber on the ‘International Legal Order of Great Spaces,’” in Empire and the Social Sciences: Global Histories of Knowledge, ed. Jeremy Adelman (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 123–40.

“The Idea of Thalassocracy in Nazi Germany: Carl Schmitt and Ernst Wolgast on Sea Power in History,” in Thalassokratographie: Rezeption und Transformation antiker Seeherrschaft, ed. Hans Kopp and Christian Wendt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 233–60.

“Max Weber,” in Liberal Moments: Reading Liberal Texts, ed. Alan S. Kahan and Ewa Atanassow (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 123–30.

“Politics without Magic: Max Weber in Weimar Germany,” in The Anthem Companion to Weber, ed. Alan Sica (London: Anthem, 2016), 231–55.

“Beyond the Other Shore: German Intellectuals in the United States” [review essay], Modern Intellectual History 12, no. 1 (2015): 235–52.

“Carl Schmitt on Land and Sea,” History of European Ideas 37, no. 2 (2011): 181–89.

“Max Weber and Charisma: A Transatlantic Affair,” New German Critique 113 (2011): 51–88.

“Skepticism and Faith: Max Weber’s Anti-Utopianism in the Eyes of his Contemporaries,” Journal of the History of Ideas 71, no. 3 (2010): 481–503.

“Philosophy Beyond the Bounds of Reason: The Influence of Max Weber on the Development of Karl Jaspers’ Existenzphilosophie, 1909­–1932,” in Max Weber Matters: Interweaving Past and Present, ed. David Chalcraft, Fanon Howell, Marisol Lopez Menendez, and Hector Vera (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 55–71.