Welcome
I am a writer, scholar and political commentator interested in judgment and justice, ideologies, democracy's troubles with capitalism and capitalism's devious talent for survival. I draw on history of ideas and political sociology to produce (hopefully) politically salient and critical analyses of modern societies. I'm currently a tenured Associate Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies.
Capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. And yet, the time is ripe for radical progressive change.
My latest book
My latest book
"This is the big-think book of our time", James Galbraith, interview. Read his review "The Pandemic and Capitalism".
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Latest
Idealism without Utopias Public Lecture
Organized by Cafe LUX
Utopias kill. We are better off without them. Yet we need a powerful idealism if we are to save the environment and save our societies at the same time.
Precarity for All Public Lecture
On the political drivers and consequences of insecurity
Organized by Boston University - Center for the Study of Europe
Pracarity is a state of politically generated social vulnerability that erodes solidarities and hampers socity's capacity to govern itself. Under the right conditions, however, it could generate emancipatory energies.
Event Details
On the Constitution of Unfreedom in 21st-Century Liberal Democracies Public Lecture
Organized by The European Studies Council of the MacMillan Center, Yale University
What is the connection between the spectacular growth of inequality and the dramatic increase of rule-of-law violations in liberal democracies?
What really troubles the 99% Public Lecture
A guest talk at the American Library in Paris
Organized by The American Library in Paris
Precarity-for-all or growing inequality, what is the greatest social evil of our age? In a debate with French economist Lucas Chancel I will address some of the fallacies and insights in the thinking about current-day capitalism.
On 1989's lost insights Public Lecture
Organized by Central and Eastern European Forum of Young Legal, Political and Social Theorists
Keynote address at the 13th CEE Forum of Young Legal, Political and Social Theorists: "Political Imagination and Utopian Energies in Central and Eastern Europe", Charles University, Prague, 16 Sept.
Hidden Letters Public Lecture
Poetry, Precarity and Post-Covid Monuments
Organized by Just Festivals
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fault lines not only of the fiscal and economic policies in most industrialized countries, but also in the debate among poets and politicians about the role of the state and culture, the future of work and the search for an alternative beyond the capitalism-socialism dichotomy. How many of these new ideas and poems will persist once the pandemic is over? Has the time for a new approach to poetry, politics and economics finally arrived? Join us for a discussion about poetry activism, precarity and post-COVID monuments with Scottish and Bulgarian poets and political scientists.
Binding the Guardian Book
On the European Commission’s failure to safeguard the rule of law
Populism and the Recasting of the Ideological Landscape of Liberal Democracies Book Chapter
in The Palgrave Handbook of Populism edited by Michael Oswald
Postcapitalism: The Return of Radical Critique Book Chapter
in Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory edited by Gerard Delanty and Stephen P. Turner
Capitalism at a Crossroads OpEd
Western democracies are at the tipping point of a tectonic policy shift; our societies are ready to venture into a new direction. Where should we go from here? If we want to advance, we need to abandon these blueprints of capitalism, socialism, or the right mix of the two, and think afresh.
