The last decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the ways in which fieldwork and other ethnographically-informed methods can be used by political theorists. By engaging directly with individuals and communities, theorists have been able to develop new questions about key topics such as justice, responsibility and rights.

This workshop will be a chance to explore new work in progress which uses these methods. It will also be an opportunity to think about how this approach relates to others in political theory, including comparative, historical and analytical, as well as about the broader relationship between political theory and the social sciences.

Note that papers will be pre-circulated, as well as being presented by their authors; participants will be emailed a link to a dropbox folder containing paper drafts.

Programme:

11:00-11:30: Registration and Coffee

11:30-11:40: Opening Comments

11:40-12:50: Theorising New Directions

Humeira Iqtidar (KCL) and Anastasia Piliavsky (KCL): Ethnography's Challenge to Political Theory

Joseph Hoover (QMUL): Are You Experienced? Notes Towards a Situated Political Theory

Discussant: Leigh Jenco (LSE)

12:50-13:50: Lunch (Sandwich Lunch Provided)

13:50-15:00: Responsibility, Agency and Justice

Matthew Longo (Leiden): Freedom at Midday: Examining the Moral Agency of Border Guards in the Final Days of the Iron Curtain.

Lisa Herzog (TUM): The good, the bad, and the indifferent: how to ground theories of economic justice

Discussant: Sarah Goff (LSE)

15:00-15:10: Break

15:10-16:20: Realism in Theory and Practice

Mollie Gerver (Essex):Real Good Examples

Janosch Prinz (UEA): Realism in Political Theory, Ethnographic Sensibility, and the Moral Agency of Bureaucrats.

Discussant: Hwa Kim (LSE)

16:20-16:40 Coffee

16:40-17:50: Shared Spaces and Places

Alfred Moore (York) and Nayanika Mathur (Oxford): How we think about why we disagree about climate change

Bernardo Zacka (MIT): What's in a balcony? The in-between as public good

Discussant: David Axelsen (LSE)

*event image by Lauriane Betin via Upsplash