Headed by Trevor Stack (Spanish and Latin American Studies, Anthropology), CISRUL’s membership reaches across 8 disciplines to house a vibrant, diverse debate about the political concepts which underpin our modern world. It brings to bear expertise in anthropology, education, history, law, philosophy, politics, sociology and theology.
CISRUL – Who we are
Trevor Stack is an anthropologist who teaches in Hispanic Studies and is working on citizenship. He has published Knowing History in Mexico: An Ethnography of Citizenship (2012), and is lead editor of the CISRUL volume Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty (2015). His articles include Beyond the State? Civil sociality and other notions of citizenship and In the eyes of the law, in the eyes of society: a citizenship tradition in west Mexico.
Michael Brown is a historian of Ireland, Scotland and Britain more widely, with particular interest in the Enlightenment and the political culture of the eighteenth century.
Nadia Kiwan is Senior Lecturer in Francophone Studies. With a dual academic training in Francophone Studies and Sociology, Dr Kiwan’s research interests are focused on intersectional approaches to questions of migration, nationality, secularism and citizenship. Her latest monograph Secularism, Islam and public intellectuals in contemporary France was published in 2019.
Tamas Gyorfi (CISRUL Deputy) has published articles on the different conceptions of the Rule of Law and the virtues of rule-based decision-making which is arguably central to the idea of the Rule of Law. He is also interested in how different constitutions and political theories conceptualise and interpret the concept of constituent power and the membership in a political community. He is a member of the Legal Theory Research Group.
Dr Shanks has worked in higher education, community education, the trade union movement and the voluntary sector. She has worked as a law lecturer, and in the University of Aberdeen’s former Centre for Lifelong Learning. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Education.
Elise was hired in our second call in September 2019. She has an interdisciplinary background in international studies and global development.
Her PhD project examines the education system of Islamic State, and the impact that living under Islamic State control has had on education more broadly. This project is supervised by Professor Pamela Abbott and Dr Rachel Shanks.
Valentin was hired in the first call in October 2018 and holds a B.A. in Political Studies and a M.A in Political Analysis from the Unirsidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
His PhD project, supervised by Dr Trevor Stack and Dr Ritu Vij, is focused on the concept of sovereignty and more exactly on the use, mobilisation and materialisation of this notion by Maori people in New Zealand.
Sophie was hired in the first call in October 2018, she completed her Research Master Political Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), where she wrote a thesis on Islamophobia and racism.
Her PhD project is supervised by Dr. Brian Brock, Professor Nadia Kiwan ,and Dr. Tamas Gyorfi and investigates to which extent political secularism in Europe is still influenced by its Christian past, and whether a potential Christian bias has (problematic) consequences for certain groups in European society.
Daniel was hired in the first call in October 2018, is a European Studies graduate (BA from the University of Kent, UK; MA from the College of Europe, Poland).
He is working on his PhD, under the supervision of Prof. Claire Wallace, Prof. Tom Weber, and Dr. Natasha Danilova, investigating the growth of populist movements in Western Europe and beyond as a reaction against liberal overreach at the “end of history”.
Jorg was hired in our second call in September 2019. His Phd project will investigate to what extent contemporary Spinozist and Nietzschean inspired conceptions of politics are at odds with Liberal-Kantian ones, and whether the former can be linked to a recent boom in speculative or ontological (i.e. anti-transcendental) philosophies. He will be supervised by Dr Beth Lord and Dr Ritu Vij.
Since 2012 Aditya has worked as an Assistant Professor of Development Studies at the Central University of South Bihar, Gaya, India. His PhD research project falls within the interstices of Urban Studies and Post-colonial/ South Asian studies. It aims to explore a) the tractions that new urban politics exerts on the subaltern groups and b) how that in turn recasts the contours of identity politics and processes of contentious politics.
Stephan was hired in the first call in October 2018 and studies political philosophy with a focus on the concept of the Political. His PhD dissertation, supervised by Dr. Ritu Vij and Dr. Tamas Gyorfi, seeks to investigate the interdependencies between democracy and populism and how populists challenge the status quo by advocating a counter-hegemonic understanding of the people.
Maxim was hired in our second call in September 2019. His project at POLITICO investigates what role the concept of political community may play in philosophical theories of civil disobedience, particularly in contentious circumstances such as post-conflict societies. He is supervised by Dr Beth Lord and Dr Trevor Stack.
Fredericke was hired in our second call in September 2019. Her PhD research, supervised by Dr. Ritu Vij and Dr. Nadia Kiwan, she is investigating the Utopian potential of the Global Women’s March Movement. She studies the movement’s global interconnectedness as well as the concrete local activism to understand these glocalized processes. She is supervised by Dr. Nadia Kiwan and Dr Ritu Vij
Marie was hired in the first call in October 2018. Her interests include political and social philosophy as well as affect theory and French theory.
Her PhD project takes a feminist-political stance on Spinoza’s relational ontology and epistemology in order to develop an affect theoretical account of political agency and political bodies building on and informed by Foucault, Deleuze, and Butler, supervised by Dr Beth Lord and Dr Andrea Teti.
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