Nolan, Melanie2024-10-022024-10-020020-8590https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733721245In this paper, I consider John French's biography, Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil (2020). French discusses his methodology, which he characterizes as "a social biographical approach". I argue that this methodology is already in historians' toolkit. Historians writing biography seem to start with first premises rather than building on what went before. I thus contextualize the methodology, situating French's biography of Lula within more general shifts in approaches to biography.application/pdfen-AU© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis202210.1017/S00208590220006212024-03-03