Engaged Political Theory

Animals are mostly absent from contemporary political thought, even though they are part of our community, and deeply impacted by our political decisions. Josh Milburn challenges this exclusion, both through scholarly research (including his books Just Fodder and Food, Justice, and Animals, the latter of which was supported by a fellowship from the British Academy) and academic outreach (including his podcast Knowing Animals). Thanks to his work promoting an overlooked topic in political philosophy, Josh was awarded the 2024 British and Irish Association for Political Thought Early Career Prize.

Anarchy is usually considered the opposite of a constitutional order. Constitutionalising Anarchy, a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Independent Social Research Foundation, tells a different story, revealing how anarchists use anarchy as a constitutional principle to create order without domination. Unlike conventional constitutionalism, anarchist constitutionalising rejects permanent, fixed authority and the use retains the order of sovereign violence to enforce compliance with rules. Two exploratory guides, Anarchic Agreements, produced with the advocacy group Seeds for Change, share insights gained in co-production with the independent labour union, the Industrial Workers of the World and the UK workers’ and housing co-op Radical Routes.

What means are legitimate when resisting injustice? Guy Aitchison addresses this tricky ethical question with a focus on real-world contexts, such as immigration detention. In his British Academy and Leverhulme Trust funded project Starving for Dignity: Re-framing the Ethics of Hunger Strikes, he unpacks the counter-intuitive use of methods that invite harm on protesters, such as hunger strikes and self-immolation. The project takes a ‘grounded’ approach to political theory, combining normative argument and interviews with ex-detainees, leading to publications in leading journals in philosophy, political science, and bioethics, as well as podcast interviews and media pieces.  

When philosophy considers the politics and ethics of reproduction, it often frames pregnancy as primarily a matter of individual choice-making. But in her book Pregnancy Without Birth, Victoria Browne calls for a much broader understanding of reproductive justice that considers how individual choices are constrained, and enabled, by wider social structures and environmental conditions. This work has been supported by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, and in her newest project, she is working with advocacy groups including MSI Choices, the Miscarriage Association, and the Reproductive Justice Initiative to explore the potential of the ‘full spectrum’ approach to pregnancy, which treats all possible pregnancy outcomes – including miscarriage, abortion, stillbirth, and live birth – as equally valid and worthy of care. Victoria is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of the leading feminist philosophy journal Hypatia, and a long-serving member of the editorial collective for the journal Radical Philosophy.

What is unity among culturally diverse citizens, and how can we foster it in ethically defensible ways? Some people think that advocates of multiculturalism ignore such questions. But Varun Uberoi’s research, published in journals such as History of Political Thought and Political Studies, shows that such questions are central to different types of multicultural political thought – and the answers they offer are also the most plausible ones. His research, part of a ‘distinctive and important’ school of thought, has been financially supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council. It has been drawn upon by the UK Home Office, the UK Cabinet Office, the Canadian Department for Citizenship and Immigration, and the Australian Senate Committee for Strengthening Multiculturalism.

Phil Parvin’s research investigates fundamental challenges to democratic theory and practice, analysing the impact of real-world developments on the way political philosophers understand and defend democracy. He is particularly interested in the way changing patterns of citizen participation, political inequality, unequal political knowledge among citizens, and the role of unelected lobby groups of various kinds challenge conventional normative theorising about democracy, and the feasibility of participatory and deliberative forms of democracy, popular among political philosophers. His work on lobbying in particular has been influential among policy makers and lobbyists themselves: helping lobbyists improve the way they engage with government and other organisations, and shaping the regulation of lobbying in the UK. His most research has been published by Princeton University Press, Routledge, and in Representation. His 2018 article in Res Publica is that journal’s most downloaded article of all time (97000+). His research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Cambridge.