Centre Members

Hugo Drochon

Co-Director and Assistant Professor of Political Theory, School of Politics and International Relations

I am a political theorist and historian of modern political thought, with interests in Nietzsche's politics, democratic theory, liberalism, conspiracy theories and the far right.

My book Nietzsche's Great Politics came out with Princeton University Press in 2016 (paperback 2018). It was reviewed in the New Yorker, TLS, New Statesman, Dissent, LARB, Times Higher Education and Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. It also featured in interviews with Vox and the Irish Times. It was selected as one of CHOICE's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2017, longlisted for the Bronislaw Geremek First Academic Book Prize and is currently being translated into Chinese (Commercial Press).

My current research is on elite theories of democracy - Mosca, Pareto and Michels - and the impact their thinking had on the development of democratic theory in the US and Europe after WWII, notably on figures such as Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Dahl, C Wright Mills and Raymond Aron. I have a book entitled Elites and Democracy under contract with Princeton University Press.

Helen McCabe

Co-Director and Assistant Professor, School of Politics and International Relations

I am currently an AHRC Fellow with "To Have and to Hold", a project about forced marriage and modern slavery. She leads the work on forced marriage in the Rights Lab, a University of Nottingham Beacon Research of Excellence (I am part of the Law and Policy Programme).

I am also the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the AHRC GCRF Network+ Anti-Slavery Knowledge Network (at the University of Liverpool), in collaboration with Against Human Trafficking Kenya and World Reader.

In October 2020 I won a UKRI-funded ESRC Covid-19 Rapid-Response grant looking at the impact of Covid-19 and Covid-related decision-making on people already experiencing, or vulnerable to, forced marriage in the UK. 

My previous research was in the political philosophy of John Stuart Mill, especially his connections to pre-Marxist socialism.

Dean Blackburn

Assistant Professor in Modern British History, Department of History 

I have been a lecturer in Modern British History since September 2013. My research engages with the intellectual history of post-war Britain. It devotes particular attention to the dynamics of ideological competition and the way in which political parties and other institutions have modified their ideologies in response to changing environmental conditions.

My recent publications have explored British social democracy in the 1980s and the character of ideological competition that took place in the 1970s.

Ben Holland

Associate Professor of International Relations, School of Politics and International Relations

I started at Nottingham in 2010. As an historian of political thought, my research is concerned with the intellectual history of the modern European state and the sense that writers have tried to make of the state by appealing to different analogies, such as ‘the self’ or God. He is the author of two monographs on this broad subject: The Moral Person of the State: Pufendorf, Sovereignty and Composite Polities (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Self and City in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Mat Humphrey

Professor of Political Theory, School of Politics and International Relations

My main research interests are in environmental political theory and political ideologies. I am currently on a Leverhulme Research Fellowship looking at the ideologies of Riders’ Rights Organisations, and at how they look to mobilise their constituency to become politically active. My second current strand of work is on public attitudes to carbon capture and storage, working with citizen focus groups, which is part of a Europe-wide research project involving sites in the UK, Spain, Italy, and The Netherlands.

Maiken Umbach

Professor of Modern History

I joined the Department of History at Nottingham in 2011, after teaching at Cambridge and Manchester, and holding visiting appointments in the United States, Germany, Spain and Australia. My work explores the relationship between political ideologies and cultural forms and practices, focusing on the role of visual and material culture in 'identity politics' in modern European history. 

Recent publications include Photography, Migration, and Identity: A German-Jewish-American Story (with Scott Sulzener, Palgrave, 2018); Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concept (with Mathew Humphrey, Palgrave 2018); Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities in National Socialist Germany (with Chris Szejnmann, Palgrave 2012); and German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism, 1890-1930 (OUP, 2009). I am currently writing on the role of ideology and subjectivity in private photography in the Third Reich. 

David Stevens

Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations

I have been lecturing in political theory at Nottingham since 2000. My interests relate mainly to questions about religion: the place of religion in politics, public life, education and schooling, and the choices individuals make.

My work spans normative political theory (of the Rawlsian analytical tradition) and rational choice theory. I have written and published on religious markets and individual religious choices, social justice, the ethics of information technology, and educational justice. I am now working on a book about moral and religious education in schools.

Chris Woodard

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy

I came to Nottingham in 2002. I have recently completed a book on utilitarianism (Taking Utilitarianism Seriously, Oxford University Press, 2019), and I am currently working on utilitarianism and moral and political virtues

Michael Freeden

Professor Freeden was for many years Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford. Following his retirement, he was appointed as an Honorary Professor in our School in 2012. In 2013 he was appointed as Professor of Political Theory in our University, and served in this post for three years, during which time he co-founded the Centre for the Study of Political Ideologies.

Professor Freeden is widely regarded as the foremost scholar of political ideology in the world. He remains research active, currently working on two contracted books. He brought tremendous vision and energy to the School during his tenure, as well as acting as a wonderful mentor to younger colleagues and PhD students.

Professor Freeden was the founding editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies, which he took from inception to one of the top-ranked political theory journals over 25 years. JPI is now edited here at Nottingham.

Professor Freeden has returned to CRISPI as its founding Honorary Professor. 

Marius Ostrowski

Social theorist and political researcher, University of Oxford

I am a political scientist, historian of ideas, social theorist, and policy thinker, with interests across several aspects of ideology studies, including the theory and history of social democracy, the intellectual prehistory of European integration, and lifelong education and skills policy.

I have held fellowships at All Souls College, University of Oxford (2013–20), and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence (2020–22), and since 2023 I am the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Political Ideologies.

Alongside my academic work, I am Executive Director of the Lifelong Education Institute, supported by the thinktank ResPublica, London.I am the author of books including Ideology (Polity, 2022) and Left Unity: Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), and I am the series editor and translator for the Collected Works of the foundational social-democratic theorist Eduard Bernstein (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018–). I have also published journal articles, press contributions, reports, and book chapters on topics such as school behaviour standards, lifelong learning pathways in the agri-food sector, fiscal policy in an independent Scotland, global democratic resilience, and a European Universal Basic Income.

I am currently working on a monograph called How we think: Ten ways society shapes our minds (Hodder & Stoughton, forthcoming 2025), and a co-edited collection (with John-Erik Hansson) on Bricolage in intellectual history: A modular approach (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2024).

Katharine Adeney

Professor of Comparative Politics, School of Politics and International Relations

I’m a Professor of Comparative Politics with a particular interest in nationalism, national identity formation and ethnic conflict in South Asia. I am currently writing a monograph (in collaboration with Wilfried Swenden, University of Edinburgh) on Majoritarianisms in South Asia.   

Recent publications include  How Can We Model Ethnic Democracy? An Application to Contemporary India,  Power Sharing in the World’s Largest Democracy: Informal Consociationalism in India (and Its Decline), Does Ethnofederalism Explain the Success of Indian Federalism?  and A Move to Majoritarian Nationalism? Challenges of Representation in South Asia. 

Sascha Auerbach

Assistant Professor in Modern British History, Department of History

I received my PhD in History from Emory University in 2001, and I am currently a Lecturer in the History Department. I specialise in the history of modern Britain and the British Empire, with a particular focus on law and race in the late-19th and early-20th century.

My first book, Race, Law, and 'the Chinese Puzzle' in Imperial Britain, was published in 2009. I am a former Fulbright research fellow at King’s College London and my articles have appeared in the Journal of Social History, Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of British Studies, the Journal of Policy History, and The Historian.

Nick Baron

Associate Professor, Department of History

I work on Russian and East European history and historical geography. Previous work includes books on Stalinism in a Russian region, Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, and East European population displacements following the First and Second World Wars. My current research project considers the cultural and political history of Soviet cartography under Lenin and Stalin.

Tony Burns

Professor of Political Theory, School of Politics and International Relations

I have a long-standing interest in the Aristotelian tradition, particularly Aristotle's conception of natural law and its impact on later philosophy and political thought, especially on the ideas of Hegel and Marx. I also have an interest in utopian political thought and literature. I am currently writing a book about the politics of recognition in the history of political thought, before and after Hegel.

Sean Fleming

Nottingham Research Fellow, Faculty of Social Sciences 

I am a political theorist and historian of political thought. My first book Leviathan on a Leash: A Theory of State Responsibility (Princeton, 2020), was about issues of collective responsibility in international politics: treaties, sovereign debts, reparations, and economic sanctions.

I am currently working on a new book Revenge of the Luddites: The Unabomber and the Rise of Anti-Tech Radicalism. I also have research interests in radical environmentalism, ecofascism, and green anarchism.

Michael Hannon

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy

I’m an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Director of the Aristotelian Society.

For the 2021-22 academic year, I am a Faculty Fellow at the Murphy Institute in New Orleans.

I work in epistemology and political philosophy. I have published on topics such as: the role of truth in politics, political empathy, identity-expressive discourse, skepticism, fallibilism, and the value of knowledge.

Kasim Khorasanee

Teaching Associate in Philosophy, Faculty of Arts

I am currently a Teaching Associate in Philosophy. My research focuses on political and applied moral philosophy - in particular democratic theory, business ethics, and political epistemology. I studied for my PhD in Political Theory at University College London (UCL) focusing on the implications of the necessity of open-mindedness for deliberative democracy. I taught at UCL, King's College London, and the University of Hertfordshire before arriving in Nottingham.

Gulshan Khan

Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations

My research interests cover Habermasian political thought, post-structuralism, the work of Oakeshott, and republican political theory. I am currently writing a book critiquing the rational self-interested subject of liberal political discourse, provisionally entitled: Agency: The Subject of Politics.

Stephen Legg

Professor of Historical Geogrpahy, School of Geography

I am a historical geographer who focuses on 20th century colonial India and the British empire. I draw most regularly on the “governmentality studies” school which emerged from the writings of Michel Foucault, in dialogue with postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.

Recent publications include Round Table Conference Geographies: Constituting Colonial India in Interwar London (Cambridge University Press 2023) and Placing Internationalism: International Conferences and the Making of the Modern World (co-edited Bloomsbury 2021). Since 2020 I have been an editor, and since 2023 Co-Editor in Chief, of the Journal of Historical Geography.

Adam Lindsay

Assistant Professor in Political Theory, School of Politics and International Relations

I am a political theorist and historian of political thought, with interests in constitutionalism, collective identity and democratic agency. I have published work on Thomas Hobbes and Hannah Arendt, and I am currently preparing a book on the concept of constituent power. 

Anna Meier

Assistant Professor, School of Politics and International Relations

I am a critical theorist working on the ways white supremacy constructs counterterrorism apparatuses. Presently I am finishing my first book manuscript, The Idea of Terror: White Supremacist Violence and the Making of Counterterrorism, which uses field research with national security bureaucrats in Germany and the US, alongside archival documents, to explore the imagined gulf between militant "terrorism" and structural white supremacy.

I've also published on terrorist proscription, proxy war and colonialism, and anti-Black racism in the United States. My work is funded by the British International Studies Association.

Diana Popescu-Sarry

Assistant Professor in Political Theory in the School of Politics and International Relations

I joined the University of Nottingham in 2023, having previously worked at the University of Edinburgh, King's College London, the University of Oxford, and the London School of Economics.

I received my PhD in Government from the London School of Economics in 2018, and also hold a Post-Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from the London School of Economics. I co-edits the Beyond the Ivory Tower series for the Justice Everywhere blog, which publishes interviews with political thinkers who have made an impact on public matters through their work.

Matthew Rendall

Assistant Professor, School of Politics and International Relations

I have articles forthcoming on the non-identity problem in the Journal of Political Philosophy, and on climate change and intergenerational equity in Political Studies. I'm also interested in lotteries, contractualism and aggregation, the precautionary principle, and nuclear deterrence.

Per Rolandsson

Teaching Associate in Modern European History, Faculty of Arts

I am an intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe, Central Europe in particular, with an emphasis on interwar political and cultural thought. My main interest is how conceptions of time, space, modern media and modernity intersect during the early to mid-20th-century.

Juliana Semione

Rights Lab Research Fellow and Lead in Survivor Engagement and Policy Impact

I leads the Rights Lab's survivor engagement and policy impact work. I am responsible for collaborating with survivors or lived experience experts to integrate their perspectives in the Rights Lab’s work at all stages of research and in the Rights Lab’s policy engagement work.

I also supports researchers across all five Rights Lab programmes in designing and following through on impact pathways, including sharing their research with stakeholders in the government and in Parliament, as well as with other policy influencers and practitioners in various sectors. 

Benjamin Thomas

Junior Fellow, LMU Munich

I am a scholar of political ideologies with a particular emphasis on ideologies of the centre-right (conservatism and christian democracy), the relationship between ideologies and the political discourse of political parties, transnational networks and the history of neoliberalism.

My doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of Nottingham School of Politics and International Relations in 2023, explored how political ideologies change through cases of neoliberalisation in West Germany and the UK.

Annemarie Walter

Assistant Professor, School of Politics and International Relations

My broad areas of research interests include political behaviour, political communication and political psychology.

My unique expertise is negative campaigning in comparative perspective. On this theme I wrote my dissertation and published numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Political Communication, Comparative Political Studies, Political Studies, Party Politics, Acta Politica and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics.