The School has a vibrant community of theorists whose interests span political theory, social and political philosophy, critical theory, ethics, and feminist philosophy. Its core members are drawn from both Politics and Philosophy and include: Rebecca Bamford, Keith Breen, Clara Fischer, Cillian McBride, Susan McManus, and Suzanne Whitten.

There has long been close collaboration between members of the political theory and philosophy groups on research, teaching and the supervision of research students. We run a weekly research workshop in political theory, social philosophy, and ethics at which members of staff, research students, and invited speakers discuss their work in progress. Online workshops have allowed us to bring in both speakers and regular participants from the UK, Europe, and America. Members of the group also participate in the Political Studies Association of Ireland’s Political Theory specialist group online seminars. In addition the group has run symposia on topics such as contemporary republican political theory, meaningful work, authenticity, corporate domination, and gender, activism, and political theory in Covid times. The workshop is open to anyone with an interest in the field - contact Cillian McBride to be added to the mailing list.

Several members of the political theory group (Breen, McBride and Whitten) share a particular interest in contemporary republican political theory. Philip Pettit (himself a Queen’s philosophy graduate) has been a visiting professor at the School and was a keynote speaker when we hosted the Association for Social and Political Philosophy’s annual conference on the theme of ‘Freedom’.

As the largest group of political theorists on the island, we are able to offer supervision across a range of research areas including republican political theory, meaningful work and workplace democracy, freedom of speech, the ethics and politics of recognition, just war theory, toleration, civility, civil disobedience, post-Kantian political philosophy and decolonial political theory, deliberative democracy, and contemporary critical theory. We welcome inquiries from anyone interested in PhD research and are happy to discuss and advise on the design of research proposals in these areas.