Dale K Van Kley

Dale K. Van Kley (born 1941) is an American historian and Emeritus Professor of History at The Ohio State University.

Van Kley is the author of numerous books and articles and has taught and conducted research throughout North America and Europe. He is best known for his prize-winning book The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791 (1996). While extensive and diverse, the bulk of his life's work has focused on the contributions that Augustinian theology made to the concepts of liberty that underlay the Enlightenment and finally informed the French Revolution. In April 2005, Shanti Singham of Williams College presented a paper at the Ohio State University in support of Van Kley's side of a historiographical debate over the French Revolution's religious origins argued primarily between himself and Catherine Maire.