My first exposure to Carl Schmitt was in 2001–2 when I had the good fortune to study the history of political thought from 1890 to the present under the supervision of Martin Rühl, then of Queens' College, Cambridge. In this setting, my first reading of Schmitt was in the context of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Weber, Sorel, Franz Neumann, Adorno and Horkheimer, all of whom were grappling in their varying ways with the political problems of late modernity. Schmitt stood out from this field both for his polemical force, and for his profound neglect among English-speaking scholars. At this time, none of Schmitt's post-war works were available in English translation, and except for the occasional efforts of Gary Ulmen as editor of Telos, there was virtually no English language scholarship on The Nomos of the Earth. The ‘gap in the market’ for serious study of Schmitt as an international thinker seemed self-evident.

In 2003 I produced a master's thesis entitled Justus hostis: Carl Schmitt on Public Enmity, returning a year later to embark on a Ph.D. studying themes of theological truth and order in Schmitt's view of world politics. Throughout this period the LSE provided a stimulating and supportive environment for the pursuit of what was often a necessarily solitary research agenda. In particular, I was enormously lucky to have Chris Brown as my supervisor.