Ruth Kinna

Professor Ruth Kinna

Mid-Career Fellow 2023-24, Small Group Project 2016-17

Constitutionalising Anarchy: an Anarchist Constitutional Politics for the 21st Century

Typically, anarchy is considered the opposite of a constitutional order. This project complicates that picture. We reveal how anarchists constitutionalise, in other words, how and why they develop declarations, rules, institutions, and democratic decision-making procedures within anarchist groups to transform in the world in which they act. The research has a theoretical, empirical and practical/normative element.

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Art Activism and Political Violence

With Gillian Whiteley

This project explores the intersections of art activism and political theory to examine conceptions of political violence. We are seeking to organise an interdisciplinary workshop to ask the question: What can art activism do to shape public debates on the ethics of political violence and how does that public debate shape art activism?

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Research outcomes

Stevens, S., & Kinna, R. (2025).

Anarchism: war, violence and scapegoating. Contemporary Political Theory, 24(1), 22-40.

Kinna, R., & Whiteley, G. (Eds.). (2020).

Cultures of Violence: Visual Arts and Political Violence (1st ed.). Routledge.

Blog posts

'The Coming Anarchy'

Alex Prichard and Ruth Kinna are rethinking the meaning and value of anarchy in the 21st century…

Areas of interest

Anarchism Political Theory History of Ideas

Cohort

MCF6 FG2

Biography

Ruth Kinna is a political theorist and historian of ideas at Loughborough University. She is co-founder and member of the Anarchism Research Group and co-editor of the journal Anarchist Studies. She is the author of Peter Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (Edinburgh, 2016) and The Government of No One (Pelican, 2019). Her most recent book, Anarchic Agreements: A Field Guide to Collective Organising (PM Press 2022), is based on research conducted with Alex Prichard on constitutionalising anarchy https://anarchyrules.info/

Biographical details correct as of 13.03.26