This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Professor Quentin Skinner's seminal work on the history of early-modern political thought, Foundations of Modern Political Thought.

This two-volume study, published in 1978, won the prestigious Wolfson Prize for history and The Times Literary Supplement has listed it as one of the hundred most influential books of the past 50 years.

A conference, called 'Rethinking the Foundations', is being held to reflect upon the achievement of this work and the directions which the history of early-modern political thought has taken since it was published. The conference will be at Gonville and Caius College from Thursday 10 - Saturday 12 April 2003.

Professor Skinner is regarded as one of Britain's leading commentators on modern political theory. He graduated with a double starred First from Gonville and Caius College, at the age of 21, and was immediately elected to a Fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge. After five years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Professor Skinner returned to Cambridge as the University's Professor of Political Science in 1979. He was appointed to the Regius Professorship in 1996.

Professor Skinner has published widely throughout his career. Other published material includes works on Machiavelli and on Hobbes.

’Foundations of Modern Political Thought’ offers both a way of reading political texts in the context of their time and a map of the field of early modern political discourse from the beginnings of the Renaissance to the nascence of the modern European state. Serving for many subsequent students as their first authoritative guide to the field, it has enjoyed huge success in its own terms and as a stimulus to further research in the subject.

David Armitage, Conference Organiser and Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, said:

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