Discipline, Dissent and Dispossession

This project seeks to establish a deeper understanding of what is at stake in the interplay between anti-systemic struggles and the more widely-dispersed modes of political control that may be directed toward and through practices of dissent. In particular, it will explore how specifically neoliberal strategies of control inscribe certain types of dissenting subjects and practices, closing political space and cementing dispossession in the name of economic necessity.

Co-producing political philosophy and social theory with grassroots constituencies: towards emergence and transformation

With Alex Prichard

This research group aims to radically re-think the praxis of knowledge ‘co-production’ between scholars and ‘grassroots’ collectives of citizens and activists. We aim to provide a novel account of why philosophical/theoretical innovation is vital in these settings and to challenge mainstream approaches to research ‘impact’ and the instrumentalisation of academic knowledge.

Insurgent Humanism

In response to climate breakdown, international complicity in genocide, and revival of Monroe Doctrine US imperialism, movements from across Latin America, southern Africa and the Levant have converged around profoundly humanistic principles. Against the current of much contemporary critical theory, this grassroots internationalism echoes the militant Third-Worldism of the twentieth century in its persistent appeals to ‘humanity’, and humanistic interpretations of international law. It is, however, also embedded within struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, and dispossessed communities that are themselves sites of rich critical thought - and sometimes explicit commitments to rethinking ‘the human’ in opposition to ideas of humanity at the heart of law and development discourse.