Bentham Project

Description

The Bentham Project, based in the Faculty of Laws at University College London (UCL), has the principal aim of producing a new critical edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, making the complete writings and correspondence of the utilitarian philosopher and legal and political reformer (1748 to 1832) fully available for the first time. It operates as an independent department of the Faculty, with UCL and the Faculty funding a full-time director, a principal research fellow and a running-costs grant; its work is supervised by the Bentham Committee, established in 1959 as a committee of the Council of University College London, and it is recognised as a British Academy Research Project. The edition draws mainly on the manuscript collections of UCL and the British Library, and the Project's Collected Works page counts 37 volumes published since 1968, from an anticipated total of more than eighty. Alongside the edition the Project is responsible for the Journal of Bentham Studies, an open-access UCL Press journal first published in 1997, and offers research tools for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history and for Bentham's writings, including a keyword search of the manuscripts using handwritten text recognition. It also hosts Transcribe Bentham, a participatory initiative launched in 2010 in which volunteers transcribe Bentham's manuscripts online, run in collaboration with UCL's Centre for Digital Humanities and UCL's library, research IT and digital media services. Correspondence for the International Society for Utilitarian Studies is addressed care of the Project, and in July 2026 the Project launched the Bentham Project Fund, a donations fund to help secure its future and the completion of the edition.

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Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

1959

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

University College London (UCL)
London

Additional Partnerships

International Society for Utilitarian Studies