Professor Stuart Elden
Small Group Project 2016-17
Henri Lefebvre's writings on rural sociology, ground rent and the politics of land
The research project intends to produce a translated and edited collection of Henri Lefebvre’s writings on ground rent, rural sociology and the politics of land, with either Verso or University of Minnesota Press. This edited collection, a joint project of Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton, will include a substantive introduction, along with extensive editorial notes to the texts. The introduction will situate Lefebvre in relation to wider Marxist work on land, including classic texts such as Marx, Lenin and Kautsky, commentaries relevant to Latin America and more recent work on agrarian change. It will relate Lefebvre’s ideas to contemporary work on political economy, rural development and the Latin American context in which they continue to find a receptive audience.
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Biography
His research is at the intersection of politics, philosophy and geography. He undertakes this work predominantly through approaches from the history of ideas.
His work over the past decade or so has been in two main areas - the history, concept and practice of territory; and the history of twentieth-century French thought.
Stuart has a BSc (Hons) in Politics and Modern History (1994) and a PhD in Political Theory (1999), both from Brunel University. His first post-PhD position was as a lecturer in politics in PAIS between 1999 and 2002; followed by eleven years in Durham University’s Department of Geography, where he was successively a lecturer, reader and professor of political geography. He rejoined PAIS in September 2013 as Professor of Political Theory and Geography. Between 2014 and 2019 he held an adjunct appointment as a Monash Warwick Professor in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University, Australia. In 2013 he was awarded a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) on the basis of publications post-PhD, and was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). In 2025 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).
Biographical details correct as of 21.05.26