With great pleasure and enduring gratitude, the Hume Society proudly announces Dr. Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the College of William & Mary, as the recipient of the 2026 Hume Society Distinguished Service Award. This honor recognizes individuals whose contributions to the Society exemplify sustained leadership, exceptional service, thoughtful stewardship, and a steadfast commitment to advancing the Society’s mission. Professor Radcliffe has distinguished herself by all these measures.
For more than three decades, Professor Radcliffe’s institutional leadership has been fundamental to the growth and flourishing of our scholarly community. Her formal service includes membership on the Executive Committee from 1996 to 1999 and leadership of the Society as President from 2010 to 2012. Her commitment to the Society’s annual meetings extends nearly thiry-five years. Since the 19th annual conference in Nantes, she has served almost continuously on the peer-review reading committee, helping to maintain the high scholarly standards of our conference programs. She also coordinated the Society’s sessions at the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association from 1992 to 1994 and contributed her organizational expertise to the planning committees for both the 1997 conference in Monterey, California, and our milestone 50th Anniversary Conference at Oxford University in 2023. Beyond the Society’s internal operations, her commitment to expanding the field was reflected in her co-organization of the 2022 NEH Summer Institute on Hume, an initiative that successfully invigorated contemporary engagement with Hume’s philosophy and brought together many members of the Hume Society alongside scholars from across the field.
Remarkably, Professor Radcliffe has twice undertaken the demanding responsibilities of co-editing Hume Studies, first from 2000 to 2005 and again from 2021 to 2026. Managing the intensive, day-to-day operations of an academic journal once is a substantial professional commitment; choosing to do so a second time is an extraordinary act of service. Across both editorial appointments, she has provided generations of authors with rigorous, constructive, and generous editorial guidance while helping to ensure that Hume Studies maintains the highest standards of scholarly excellence. Her careful attention to submissions, reviews, revisions, and the many ongoing responsibilities of editorship has contributed greatly to the continued strength, reputation, and intellectual excellence of the journal. Each time she has undertaken this role, she has done so with exceptional care, good judgment, and a deep commitment to supporting both authors and readers of Hume scholarship.
Professor Radcliffe’s exceptional service to the Society is all the more impressive because it has been sustained alongside a distinguished scholarly career. She is internationally recognized for her work on Hume’s ethics, the passions, and action theory. The author of three monographs, editor of several influential collections, including The Cambridge Critical Companion to Hume’s “Treatise,” and author of dozens of peer-reviewed articles, her scholarship is anchored by her landmark book Hume, Passion, and Action, published in 2018. Her work is widely admired for its textual precision, analytical clarity, and careful historical interpretation. Through her scholarship, Professor Radcliffe has advanced understanding of Hume’s philosophy while contributing to broader philosophical conversations concerning ethics, moral psychology, emotion, and practical reasoning.
Because Professor Radcliffe’s commitment has spanned more than thirty years, generations of Hume Society members have directly benefited from her leadership, administrative service, and intellectual generosity. As a frequent contributor to the Society’s Mentoring Workshops, she has supported successive cohorts of early-career scholars, offering thoughtful guidance on academic publishing, the job market, and professional development. Her mentorship has helped create a culture within the Society in which younger scholars are welcomed, encouraged, and supported as they enter the profession. Through these efforts, as well as through her editorial and scholarly work, she has contributed not only to the advancement of Hume scholarship but also to the continued strength of the scholarly community that sustains it.
Professor Radcliffe’s service has been distinguished not only by its extraordinary scope but also by the qualities she brings to every role she undertakes. Members of the Society have long benefited from her intellectual generosity, kindness, and collegiality alongside her remarkable scholarly achievements. Her leadership has consistently combined careful judgment with a genuine commitment to the flourishing of others, helping to foster the collaborative and supportive character that has long defined the Hume Society.
The contemporary vitality, intellectual rigor, and collegial spirit of the Hume Society are inseparable from Professor Radcliffe’s decades of dedicated service. Through her leadership, editorial work, scholarship, and mentorship, she has helped sustain the Society as a vibrant intellectual community and strengthened the connections among generations of Hume scholars. In honoring Professor Radcliffe with the 2026 Distinguished Service Award, we express our profound gratitude for more than three decades of leadership, generosity, and unwavering commitment. Her contributions have helped shape not only the Society’s institutions but also the welcoming and intellectually vibrant community that continues to define the Hume Society.
—Angela Coventry and Jason Fisette