‘Political Concepts in the World’ Project Successfully Concludes

The Political Concepts in the World (POLITICO) project, a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen and the Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie programme, has come to a close this month with the summer graduations.

The project, which hosted Early-Stage Researchers drawn from across the social sciences and humanities, focused on understanding how political concepts are used in the world.

The researchers developed their own PhD research theses around how political concepts have been fostered historically, debated philosophically and politically, fought over by social movements, codified in law, transmitted through education and the media, and lived out in everyday life. The research included:

• Maxim van Asseldonk’s Radical democratic legitimisation without the people: constituent power and the problematic ontology of peoplehood
• Elise Boyle Espinosa’s ‘Diversity of destinies’: The impact of Islamic State on higher education in Eastern Syria
• Valentin Clavé-Mercier’s Sovereignty otherwise: Discourses and practices of Tino Rangatiratanga in the Māori politics of sovereignty
• A. Sophie Lauwer’s The unlevel playing field: Political secularism and the question of secular and Christian hegemony
• Jorg Meurke’s At once sensible and intelligible: Kant’s solution to the Third Antinomy in terms of an inclosure paradox
• TD Nguyen’s Dehegemonising authoritarianism: The case of Vietnam’s street protests
• Marie Wuth’s Acting in concert and conflict. Thinking ‘political’ with Spinoza

Throughout the project, the Early Stage Researchers also worked with CISRUL staff to hold various reading groups, seminars, workshops, and conferences around the themes of the project. This included, among others:

• The interdisciplinary conference ‘Decolonizing Political Concepts’, organised by Marie Wuth and Valentin Clavé-Mercier, who also went on to publish a book of the same title
• The ‘Conceptualising Difference’ conference, summer school, and associated reading group series, organised by A. Sophie Lauwers and Fredericke Weiner, and with keynote speakers Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis Gordon, Sabine Hark, Gurpreet Mahajan, and Anya Topolski
• The ‘Conceptualising Community’ conference, summer school, and reading group series, organised by Maxim van Asseldonk and Elise Boyle Espinosa, with keynote speakers Gerald Taylor Aiken, Dilar Dirik, and Bonnie Honig

The Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law, continues to host Early Stage Researchers, along with ongoing reading groups and events. For information about PhD hosting and funding, see this page.