Peter Iver Kaufman studies the political cultures and literature of late antique Europe and North Africa as well as those of early modern Europe.

Since 2008, Kaufman has been the George Matthews and Virginia Brinkley Modlin Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond Jepson School of Leadership Studies, where he teaches and writes about modern and postmodern political theory with books on Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben.

Kaufman is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the religious studies and history departments.

Founder of the Scholars Latino Initiative in North Carolina, Kaufman continues to work as faculty coordinator of SLI in Richmond and with the newest chapters comprising the Shenandoah Valley Scholars Latino Initiative in Harrisonburg and Winchester, Virginia.

Kaufman is founding editor of the Religions Around series for Penn State Press and was editor-in-chief for the journal Religions for its first ten years. His most recent articles appeared in Cambridge University Press’s Critical Guide for Augustine’s City of God, edited by James Wetzel, The Elizabethan World, edited for Routledge Press by Susan Doran and Norman Jones, and The Harvard Theological Review. His latest article on Augustine and Giorgio Agamben will appear in New Blackfriars in 2024.

Among his publications is the forthcoming Arendt Disenchanted (2025).