His research interests are in early modern European intellectual history, with a special focus on the birth of the first British Empire. Ahn has published widely on this subject and is currently completing his first book, tentatively titled “Britain before the Empire: Bolingbroke and the Road to the Patriot King, 1688–1751.” His recent publications include “From Hanover to Gibraltar: Cato’s Letters (1720–1723) in International Context,” which appeared in History of European Ideas (2016), and Fénelon in the Enlightenment: Traditions, Adaptations, and Variations (Brill/Rodopi, 2014), coedited with Christoph Schmitt-Maaß and Stefanie Stockhorst.