Andrew R. Murphy

Andrew Murphy is Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. A native of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, he received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has written extensively on the theory and practice of religious liberty in England and America, from his first book, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (2001), to his most recent, a biography of William Penn entitled William Penn: A Life (2018). He is the author of Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn (2016); and co-editor of The Worlds of William Penn (2019). A scholarly edition of William Penn's Political Writings appeared in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series in 2021.

Murphy’s research has also explored the interconnections between religion and American politics, most particularly in Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 (2008) and (co-authored, with David S. Gutterman of Willamette University) Political Religion and Religious Politics: Navigating Identities in the United States (2015).