People
Director: Trevor Stack is an anthropologist who is working on citizenship. He has recently published a book Knowing History in Mexico: An Ethnography of Citizenship (2012), as well as articles entitled 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, and is writing a chapter in a volume that he is co-editing on the idea of religion as an issue for citizenship.
Deputy Matyas Bodig is a legal theorist who has a long-standing interest in the relation of citizenship to rule of law.
Brian Brock is a theologian and ethicist with a particular interest in political theology. He is a core member of the Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability and a contributor to the 2010 Religious-Secular Distinctions conference at the British Academy.
Michael Brown is a cultural historian who has written extensively on civil society in 18th century Europe. He has participated in our workshops and in several seminars, as well as helping to set up and lecturing on our 6th Century ?What Gives Us Rights?? course.
Ben Davies is a lecturer in the Business School whose interests lie in the relationships between individual decision making, institutions, and theories of governance related particularly to environmental issues.
Liz Curtis is a lecturer in Education and has a background in anthropology and education. She has a particular interest in Citizenship Education and is collaborating in the CISRUL's 2013 workshop on Citizenship Education.
Nigel Dower is a philosopher with a strong interest in global citizenship and issues of global responsibility. Although global citizenship can be expressed through involvement in NGOs in global civil society, currently its expression is for more people in 'globally oriented citizenship' (Parekh) within their own countries, that is by being active and engaged citizens trying to influence the direction of government policies and public attitudes within their own political and social communities. He has published on global ethics, including development, the environment, human rights, peace & security, and global citizenship.
Karin Friedrich focuses on the theory and practice of citizenship in the context of mixed monarchy and parliamentarianism in early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Her research relates to a wider picture of the long-term contribution of pre-modern civil society to reform and modernisation, the development of the rule of law, and modern forms of political engagement. She is co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies.
Tamas Gyorfi 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.
Hilary Homans has a strong commitment to poverty alleviation, reducing inequity and promoting social inclusion and has worked with 43 countries (eleven in sub Saharan Africa and 25 in the former Soviet Union) and is a founder member of two NGOs in the UK and Zimbabwe. She is also Director of the Centre for Sustainable International Development.
Isabella Jackson works on the modern history of China and in particular on the International Settlement at the heart of Shanghai, looking at the international form of colonialism in practice there and how it functioned on the ground in the form of the Shanghai Municipal Council; the interconnections between China and the British World, especially India, through my work on the Sikh policemen who worked in the Settlement; the evolving Chinese perspectives on and representations of the foreign presence in Shanghai, demonstrating the ways in which political authorities appropriate the past to serve conflicting aims; and social reform in late Qing and early Republican China.
Nathaniel Jezzi has an interest in political philosophy and has been attending since September 2012.
Nadia Kiwan is working on modes of citizenship among North African and other immigrants in France, and is currently involved in a collaborative AHRC project on networks of North African artists in France.
Owen Logan's research centres on substantive rights (such as the right to withdraw labour) in contrast to the right to have rights. In political theory this distinction tends to bring out the difference between positive and negative liberties and the theoretical tension between democracy and liberalism, while in everyday relations it is played out in cultural institutions and values, public discourse and the mass media. He is pursuing these questions through the Flammable Societies project – a series of socioeconomic studies of the oil and gas industry, funded by the Norwegian Research Council, including Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Norway, Nigeria, UK and Venezuela.
Karen Salt is a Caribbeanist in the Department of History whose research revolves around issues of sovereignty, race, development and political economy in the Caribbean Basin and in the wider Atlantic world. She has published on trade, diplomacy, and place branding, especially as these concepts relate to Haiti.
Andrea Teti is a Lecturer in International Relations. His primary research interests are currently in civil society and democratisation in the Middle East. He is a member of the Franco-Italian research project "L'essor de la «société civile» dans le monde musulman" funded by the French Agence Nationale pour la Recherce, where he works on the genealogy of "civil society" and its role in democracy promotion, and a research network focusing on 'Informal Networks of Power in the Middle East', and he is also a founding member of the British Society for Middle East Studies' Critical Middle East Studies working group (C-MES). His first book, Confessions of a Dangerous Paradigm: Contradictions of Western Democracy-promotion, is forthcoming by Asghate.