Elena Yi-Jia Zeng specializes in Enlightenment political theory and intellectual history. Her research addresses two of the main challenges of liberal democracy today, namely, public opinion and economic stagnation. She is particularly interested in the questions of what the conditions of political stability are, and how to moderate extreme beliefs. In pursuing these lines of inquiry, she investigates the role of skepticism in the history of modern moral and political thought. Her works have been published in History of European Ideas and International Journal of Philosophical Studies. She also guest-edited the special issue “David Hume and Political Epistemology” for Cosmos and Taxis.

At UCHV, Elena will be working on her first monograph The Politics of Belief in Hume and Enlightenment Skepticism, and undertaking her next project “The Sustainable Political Economy of the Stationary State.”

Elena was elected a Postgraduate Member of the Royal Historical Society, UK in 2022. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2024. She read history in Taiwan, and gained an MA in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of London.