Millennials to Philennials: 2000 & beyond

I am currently Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, and hold a BA (2000), MSc (2004), MA (2005), DPhil (2010), and FHEA (2018). Prior to coming to Bristol (2014), I was a Research Fellow (2009-2010), and then British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow (2010-2014), in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. I was also Junior Research Fellow at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, Senior Research Scholar at University College, Oxford, and Stipendiary Lecturer at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. As a grad student, my Masters Degrees were at Edinburgh and Columbia, before taking my DPhil (PhD) at Oxford. During this period, I also took courses at Berkeley, NYU, and the New School.

Since 2004, I've won or held the following prizes or fellowships: College Scholarship (Edinburgh, 2004); ESRC doctoral studentship (declined, 2004); PhD Faculty Fellowship (Columbia, 2004); Exchange Scholarship (Columbia/Berkeley, 2005); AHRC doctoral studentship (Oxford, 2005); GA Paul Scholarship (University College, Oxford, 2007); Research Fellowship (Centre for Political Ideologies, Oxford, 2009); Senior Research Scholarship (University College, Oxford, 2009); Leverhulme Early-Career Fellowship (declined, 2010); Junior Research Fellowship (St. Hilda's College, Oxford, 2010); British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship (Oxford, 2010); British Academy 'Rising Star' Award (Bristol, 2017); University Research Fellowship (2018); and AHRC Leadership Fellowship (2022-2024). I’ve also held, since 2021, various visiting positions at Oriel College [University of Oxford], the Centre for the Study of Social Justice [University of Oxford], the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and the Humanities (HSSH) at the University of Helsinki, the Institute for Political Science at the University of Münster, and the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at the University of Heidelberg.

In 2016 I won the most votes across the University in a competition to find Bristol's 'best lecturers'. To see the public lecture given as a result of that vote, see here. In 2017, I won the Students' Award for 'Outstanding Teaching' in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, at the annual Bristol Teaching Awards. In 2021 I won the Jennie Lee Prize for Outstanding Teaching - a national career prize from the Political Srudies Association (PSA).

Having started my own University journey in the autumn of 2000, in the heady days before 911, Facebook, Covid, or indeed our now-daily economic and environmental ‘crises’ and ‘emergencies’, I’m keen to do what I can, given who and where I am, to help improve the intellectual climate for tomorrow’s students.

For now, this means encouraging the teaching of political philosophy in schools, in the hope that it improves how we think, talk, and ultimately live together. My generation ended up being called Millennials (though I’m a borderline member), and are sometimes defined by debt (tuition-fees, mortgages, national borrowing), sometimes by delicacy (trigger-warnings, snowflakes, safe-spaces), and sometimes even by decadence (Flat Whites, Netflix, Tindr). Much of this is nonsense, and tends to overlook how people change as well as how they vary, but either way, my dream now is of the next cohort, as defined by a brand new philosophical skillset and sensibility. These I call Philennials.

From pupil to professor and back again. Although I was well taught about ought…I now pursue teaching without preaching