Dr Tom Arnold-Forster

My research focuses on the political and intellectual history of the modern United States, with intersecting interests in the history of political thought. My first book, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, 2025), provides a new historical account of a prominent journalist and political theorist who shaped the development of American liberalism and democratic theory across the twentieth century. I have also published articles on urban politics, media history, the history of jazz, and other topics. My current book project explores the relationship between corruption and the public sphere from Progressive Era muckraking to the Watergate crisis.

As the Kinder Career Development Fellow at the RAI, I work with colleagues at the University of Missouri in delivering the Kinder Institute’s MA in Atlantic History and Politics. Before joining Oxford in January 2025, I taught US history and the history of political thought at King’s College London for three years. I completed my BA, MPhil, and PhD at the University of Cambridge, where I was also a Junior Research Fellow. My research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Library of Congress, the University of Chicago Library, and the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Website: RAI Page

Publications

Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025).

“Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion,” American Journalism 40, no. 1 (2023): 51–79. [Winner of the Society for US Intellectual History’s 2024 Dorothy Ross Prize for best article in US intellectual history]

“Journalism and Corruption in Chicago, 1912–1931,” Historical Journal 65, no. 5 (2022): 1374–96.

“Rethinking the Scopes Trial: Cultural Conflict, Media Spectacle, and Circus Politics,” Journal of American Studies 56, no. 1 (2022): 142–66.

“New Histories of American Newspapers,” Historical Journal 63, no. 5 (2020): 1390–1400.

“Democracy and Expertise in the Lippmann-Terman Controversy,” Modern Intellectual History 16, no. 2 (2019): 561–92.

“Dr. Billy Taylor, ‘America’s Classical Music,’ and the Role of the Jazz Ambassador,” Journal of American Studies 51, No. 1 (2017): 117–39.

I’ve also written reviews and essays for Global Intellectual History, American Political Thought, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and Dissent.