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The Portrait Conversation welcomes special guest Dr. Nicholas Cole, Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford University, who studies the political thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the history of democratic institutions. In this conversation we will discuss the evolution of constitutional democracies, the debate at the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787 over the Electoral College, and implications for today.

Dr. Cole’s particular interests are the influence of classical political thought on America’s first politicians, and the search for a new ‘science of politics’ in post-Independence America.

He runs the Quill Project on Negotiated Texts, based at Pembroke College, which studies the creation of constitutions, treaties, and legislation. The Quill software platform (developed with colleagues at the Oxford e-Research Centre) presents a recreation of the original context within which decisions about these texts were made. The flagship work of the project is a presentation of the records of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that wrote the Constitution of the United States and a variety of other projects are planned or in progress. See the Quill Project website for further details.

Dr Cole teaches American History and the history of political thought and supervises graduates working on the history of institutions, political thought and classical reception. He runs the TORCH (Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) network on Negotiated Texts.

The painting you see in the background of the title graphic shared here at the top of this page is the 1940 painting by artist Howard Chandler Christy titled Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States.

Please click on these wingtips to support the creation and sharing of art, entertainment and inspiration on this site. Besides a donation, another way to support is by joining PaintboxTV.com which gives you access to hundreds of tutorial videos, custom digital art extras and participation in member-only online courses. The shoes shown in this photo were amongst my first dance shoes when I started Lindy Hop swing dancing and were signed by two of my dance inspirational heroes: Frankie Manning and Norma Miller.