Oxford Political Thought Seminar

The Oxford Political Thought seminar showcases some of the most exciting work in the history of political thought and political theory.

We will meet in person on Mondays at 17:00-18:30 except for Week 3 which will meet on Wednesday. Please see individual listings for venues.

To get on the mailing list send a blank email to mailto:opt-seminar-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

All welcome!

Type: Seminar Series
Series organisers: Teresa Bejan , Ben Jackson , Sarah Mortimer , Jon Parkin , Sophie Smith , David Leopold , Jeanne Morefield

Friday 9 November 2018 (5th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - In Conversation: History, Philosophy and Feminism
Please note the change in location: this week's seminar will be held in the Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre in Christ Church.
Martha Nussbaum (Chicago)

Friday 16 November 2018 (6th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - 'Political Theory for the Real World'
Michael Goodhart (Pittsburgh)

Friday 23 November 2018 (7th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - 'Human Rights on Trial'
Justine Lacroix and Jean-Yves Pranchère (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Friday 30 November 2018 (8th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - 'Moral possibility'
Annabel Brett (Cambridge)

Friday 18 January 2019 (1st Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'Merze Tate on Religion, Imperialism, and Anglo-American Relations in the Pacific
Barbara Savage (Pennsylvania)

Friday 25 January 2019 (2nd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Thucydides on the Corruption of Language, or The Unbearable Lightness of Logos
Mark Fisher (Georgetown)

Friday 1 February 2019 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Locke versus Filmer revisited
James Harris (St Andrews)

Friday 8 February 2019 (4th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - The mundane in a spectacular era: #metoo and #blacklivesmatter
Shatema Threadcraft (Dartmouth)

Friday 15 February 2019 (5th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Socialism's heart of darkness: the origins of 'Eurafrica' in dissident Social Democracy, 1918-32
Marius Ostrowski (Oxford)

Friday 22 February 2019 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - The End of Enlightenment: A Discussion of the Carlyle Lectures
Richard Whatmore (St Andrews)

Friday 1 March 2019 (7th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Natural right theory in Kant’s legal metaphors
Sofie Møller (Frankfurt)

Friday 8 March 2019 (8th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - The Origins of the End of Ideology Debate: An Alternative History
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins (Yale)

Friday 18 October 2019 (1st Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - In the Shadow of Justice
Katrina Forrester (Harvard)

Friday 25 October 2019 (2nd Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - 'Heterodoxy and Political Economy in Sir William Petty: 1623-1687
Shannon Stimson (Georgetown)

Friday 1 November 2019 (3rd Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - Rivers are People Too?: On Legal Personhood for Nature
Sean Fleming (Cambridge)

Friday 8 November 2019 (4th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - 'Colonialism vs Imperialism
Barbara Arneil (UBC)

Friday 15 November 2019 (5th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - Early British Socialism and the "Religion of the New Moral World"
Edward Lucas (Oxford)

Thursday 21 November 2019 (6th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - The Neo-Liberal Turn
Note this week's talk is on THURSDAY
Angus Burgin (Johns Hopkins)

Friday 29 November 2019 (7th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - A utopian feminist in the French Revolution: J. H. Lawrence against marriage
Due to industrial action this seminar has been cancelled
Status: This talk has been cancelled
Anne Verjus (CNRS)

Friday 6 December 2019 (8th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - The Paradox of Loss: Reading Edward Said for Political Theory
Jeanne Morefield (Birmingham)

Wednesday 22 January 2020 (1st Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'Republicanism and Anti-Trinitarianism in John Milton's Poetry and Prose'
Deni Kasa (Tel Aviv)

Friday 24 January 2020 (1st Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'Socialist Internationalism and the Problem of Islam'
Faridah Zaman (Oxford)

Friday 31 January 2020 (2nd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'Theorizing Political Resistance to Racism: From Occasioning Sight to Constituting Power'
Ainsley LeSure (Occidental)

Friday 7 February 2020 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'The Stateless in the History of International Political Thought'
Mira Siegelberg (Cambridge)

Friday 14 February 2020 (4th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'The Mixing Body: A Theory of Property in Locke'
Hagar Kotef (SOAS)

Friday 28 February 2020 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'Republicanism and Anti-Trinitarianism in John Milton's Poetry and Prose
Deni Kasa (Tel Aviv)

Friday 6 March 2020 (7th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - 'Re-framing Islam: Submission, Reformation, Pacification’
Murad Idris (UVA)

Wednesday 11 March 2020 (8th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Discussion of the Carlyle Lectures: 'Don't Think for Yourself: Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy'
Peter Adamson (Munich)

Thursday 15 October 2020 (1st Week, Michaelmas Term)

17:00 - Roundtable on The Case for Scottish Independence
Ben Jackson (Oxford)

Friday 23 October 2020 (2nd Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:30 - Laws, liberties and the will of the people (right and wrong): political thought in the wars of religion
Sarah Mortimer (Oxford)

Monday 26 October 2020 (3rd Week, Michaelmas Term)

11:00 - Graduate Political Theory Conference - Day 1
Various Speakers

Tuesday 27 October 2020 (3rd Week, Michaelmas Term)

11:00 - Graduate Political Theory Conference - Day 2
Various Speakers

Friday 13 November 2020 (5th Week, Michaelmas Term)

14:30 - Re-Framing Islam: Submission, Reformation, Pacification
Murad Idris (UVA/Michigan)

Friday 20 November 2020 (6th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:30 - Kant, Empiricism, and the Fate of Nations at the Dawn of the Nineteenth Century
Morgan Golf-French (Oxford)

Friday 27 November 2020 (7th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:45 - Politics, Time and East German Identity in the Era of Late Socialism
Marcus Colla (Oxford)

Friday 29 January 2021 (2nd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State
Steven Klein (KCL)

Friday 5 February 2021 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Freedom: An Unruly History
Annelien de Dijn (Utrecht)

Thursday 11 February 2021 (4th Week, Hilary Term)

15:30 - Contesting Conformity: Democracy and the Paradox of Political Belonging
Jennie Ikuta (Missouri)

Thursday 25 February 2021 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

15:30 - African American Political Thought: A Collected History
Melvin Rogers (Brown)

Friday 5 March 2021 (7th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford)

Friday 12 March 2021 (8th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - John Locke and Empire (Carlyle Lectures)
Mark Goldie (Cambridge)

Thursday 13 May 2021 (3rd Week, Trinity Term)

16:00 - Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement
Erin Pineda (Smith College)

Thursday 20 May 2021 (4th Week, Trinity Term)

16:00 - Louis Blanc: Republican Socialism in 19th Century France
Pablo Scotto (Barcelona/Oxford)

Thursday 27 May 2021 (5th Week, Trinity Term)

16:00 - Statelessness: A Modern History
Mira Siegelberg (Cambridge)

Friday 15 October 2021 (1st Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - New Book: The Right to Sex
Amia Srinivasan (Oxford), Commentator: Shai Agmon, Commentator: Jenny Huang, Commentator: Kushti Westwood

Friday 22 October 2021 (2nd Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - New Book: Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion
Sophie Nicholls (Oxford), Commentator: Connor Grubaugh, Commentator: Kate Shore

Friday 29 October 2021 (3rd Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - New Book: John Stuart Mill: Socialist
Helen McCabe (Nottingham), Commentator: Oliver Gough, Commentator: Charlie Richards

Friday 5 November 2021 (4th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - New Book: The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of the Revolution
Mitchell Dean (Copenhagen Business School), Daniel Zamora (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Commentator: Owen Coughlan, Commentator: Emily Dyson

Thursday 11 November 2021 (5th Week, Michaelmas Term)

16:00 - New Book: Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought
Tae-Yeoun Keum (UC Santa Barbara), Comentator: Audrey Borowski, Comentator: Jamie Ranger

Friday 19 November 2021 (6th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - English News Culture and Classical Republican Thought in the 1640s
Jamie Gianoutsos (Mount St Mary's)

Friday 26 November 2021 (7th Week, Michaelmas Term)

12:00 - New book: Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing
Mogens Laerke (CNRS)

Friday 21 January 2022 (1st Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Discussion of Sarah Mortimer's Reformation, Resistance and Reason of State (1517-1625): the Oxford History of Political Thought
Sarah Mortimer, Geertje Bol, Jacob Chatterjee

Friday 28 January 2022 (2nd Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - City, faction, and tyranny: Bartolus of Sassoferrato's three treatises on city government
If you are planning to attend in person please book a ticket at the link below
George Garnett (Oxford), Magnus Ryan (Cambridge)

Thursday 3 February 2022 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

17:15 - The Gender of Critical Theory
Extra Session with the Critical Theory Seminar
Lois McNay (University of Oxford), Commentator: Liz Frazer (Politics)

Friday 4 February 2022 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Claudia Jones' "Triple Oppression" Concept and the interrelation of Race, Gender, and Class
Vanessa Wills (George Washington University)

Friday 11 February 2022 (4th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Title TBC
Tim Stuart-Buttle (York)

Friday 18 February 2022 (5th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Rereading An American Dilemma
Emma MacKinnon (Cambridge)

Tuesday 22 February 2022 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

13:00 - Birth of Neoliberal Anti-Environmentalism in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s
Extra session with American History Research Seminar
Niklas Olsen (University of Copenhagen)

Friday 25 February 2022 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Reconsidering Racial Capitalism: From Necessity to Entanglement
Emily Katzenstein (Oxford)

Friday 4 March 2022 (7th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - The rule of merit and the merit of rules
Benjamin Straumann (Zurich/NYU)

Friday 11 March 2022 (8th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - The Cold War and the Canon of Liberalism: A Discussion of the Carlyle Lectures
Sam Moyn (Yale)

Monday 10 October 2022 (1st Week, Michaelmas Term)

Monday 17 October 2022 (2nd Week, Michaelmas Term)

16:00 - Miltonic Monsters among the British Moralists: The Imagination of AI from Hobbes to Shelley
Eileen M Hunt (Notre Dame)

Monday 24 October 2022 (3rd Week, Michaelmas Term)

16:00 - Painting Political Philosophy
Emma Planinc (Notre Dame)

Monday 31 October 2022 (4th Week, Michaelmas Term)

16:00 - Parliamentary institutions in the political thought of Jean Bodin
Paulina Kewes (Oxford)

Monday 14 November 2022 (6th Week, Michaelmas Term)

16:00 - Languages of republicanism: res publica and swaraj
Manjeet Ramgotra (SOAS)

Tuesday 22 November 2022 (7th Week, Michaelmas Term)

16:00 - From Cyberspace to the Metaverse: Toward an Intellectual History of the Internet
Please note this seminar will be on Tuesday at the Rothermere American Institute
Angus Burgin (Johns Hopkins)

Monday 16 January 2023 (1st Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, and the History of Political Thought
Samuel Zeitlin (Colgate)

Monday 23 January 2023 (2nd Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells on (Black) Loss: Egalitarian Witness Against Pornographic Pain
Juliet Hooker (Brown)

Monday 30 January 2023 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Discussion of the Carlyle Lectures: Custom, Common Law and Civil Law
John Hudson (St Andrews)

Monday 6 February 2023 (4th Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Economies of Conspiracy: Hidden Power and the Erosion of Democracy in Athenian Political Thought
Demetra Kasimis (Chicago)

Monday 13 February 2023 (5th Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Toleration, Time and the Other
Marietta van der Tol (Oxford)

Monday 20 February 2023 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

12:00 - Discussion of The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes
Please note this seminar is at 12:00-13:30
Stefan Eich (Georgetown)

Monday 27 February 2023 (7th Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Forward Ever: Nkrumah’s Conception of Anticolonial Speed
Musab Yunis (Queen Mary University of London)

Monday 6 March 2023 (8th Week, Hilary Term)

16:00 - Discussion of Unsettling the World: Edward Said and Political Theory
Jeanne Morefield (Oxford)

Monday 15 January 2024 (1st Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - New Book: Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom
Lawrie Balfour (University of Virginia)

Monday 22 January 2024 (2nd Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - José Sarria’s performance archive and the making of nelly queens, 1953-1963
Mori Reithmayr (Oxford)

Wednesday 31 January 2024 (3rd Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative
Please note this talk is on Wednesday
Jennifer Burns (Stanford)

Monday 5 February 2024 (4th Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent (1619/20) and early modern conciliar thinking
Eloise Davies (Oxford)

Monday 12 February 2024 (5th Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - Feminism Re-Scaled: From Subject and Ethics to Structures and Politics
Kathi Weeks (Duke)

Monday 19 February 2024 (6th Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - Discussion of the Carlyle Lectures
Paul Seaward (History of Parliament)

Monday 26 February 2024 (7th Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - Hobbes, Reception, and the Politics of Freethinking
Elad Carmel (Edinburgh)

Monday 4 March 2024 (8th Week, Hilary Term)

17:00 - Political Cooperation in Hell: Bonaventure, Suarez, and Milton
Daniel Schwartz (Hebrew University)

Showing all talks

Editors: Laura Spence, Belinda Clark, Holly Omand, Rebecca Freeman, Joby Mullens, Daniel Burton