Michael R. Gonzalez received his Ph.D. in political science from Baylor University, where he also served as Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow for the Baylor Honors College. His dissertation, entitled The Political Necessity of Religion, contrasted the political and theological thought of Lucretius, St. Augustine, and Thomas Hobbes on the proper role of religion in political life. Stemming from this doctoral research, his scholarship extends from the late classical to the early modern, examining the relationship between spiritual and political authority.

Through the Madison Program he is working on a book manuscript that elucidates Hobbes’s conflict with Augustine’s political theology and its medieval interpreters. Additionally, Michael is interested in the philosophical debates of late republican Rome, especially as seen in the writings of Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, and Sallust.

Michael published his MA thesis, which assessed the development of the law of nations in classical and medieval thought, in the edited volume Polis, Nation, Global Community. This paper won the Frances V. Harbour Graduate Student Paper Award in International Ethics from the International Studies Association. His writings have appeared in Interpretation, Public Discourse, and The Catholic Thing.