William Bulman

Biography

William Bulman (he/him) is an award-winning scholar and teacher who studies the political, religious, and intellectual history of Britain and its empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the broader global history of majority rule. His research employs both humanistic and social-scientific methodologies. It has been supported by awards from the Mellon Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015.

Bulman’s first monograph, Anglican Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2015), re-interprets the early Enlightenment, the post-revolutionary Church of England, and the religious politics of later Stuart England and its empire. His second monograph, The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and its Empire (Cambridge, 2021), locates the origins of majority rule in the representative assemblies of early modern Britain and its Atlantic colonies. He is also the co-editor of two other books, God in the Enlightenment (Oxford, 2016) and Political and Religious Practice in the Early Modern British World (Manchester, 2022).

Bulman is currently writing a global history of majority rule for a general audience as well as a monograph on debates about majority rule in revolutionary England. He is also conducting more technical, interdisciplinary research on the emergence of majority rule and party politics in Britain and its empire, and continuing his line of research on religion and the early Enlightenment.