RESEARCH PROJECTS
The Spiral World: A propaedeutic of dialectical analysis
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The book project traces the intellectual history of dialectical thinking since the Axial Age to the present. The first volume charts dialectics across Ancient India, Budhism, Daoism, Classical Greece, Scholasticism and the Islamic Golden Age. The second volume examines the dialectical systems of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. The final volume engages with dialectics in the 20th Century and its myriad of contemporary forms.
Tyrannicide and Assassination in State-Systems
This book project offers an historical and normative examination of the arguments used to justify, both politically and legally, the assassination of Heads of Government. It involves four historical case-studies of assassination and tyrannicide across different states systems (Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy, Early Modern Europe, and Liberal International Order) before examining the recent cases of attempts on Saddam Hussein (2003) and Muammar Qaddafi (2011).
Emancipatory Cosmopolitanism: Critical theory, recognition, and the future of humanity
Based on my PhD research, this book project constructs a critical, relational account of cosmopolitanism that deploys the methods of the Frankfurt School and the recognition theory of Axel Honneth. Using the framework of reconstructive critique, it charts the expansion and enhancement of recognition processes to help understand actual developments towards cosmopolitan community in personal, private, and public spheres.
Climate Change and Ecological Crises
This is an ongoing research area consisting of a range of projects, including:
* Climate change as social collapse and grave non-traditional security threat
* Climate change ethics, moving away from distributional justice frameworks to social recognition
* Social Ecology and the work of Murray Bookchin as a means to promote viable environmental and social change
* Dialectical Naturalism and overcoming the separation between human & nature in thought and practice
* Climate Change science and discourse analysis of the IPCC reports
A Critical Introduction to IR Theory (with Martin Weber)
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This co-authored book engages IR theory from the perspective of Critical International Relations Theory. Adopting the methods and approaches of the Frankfurt School, the book offers a critical analysis of the core concepts and ideas of the discipline and attempts to forge new ground through an alternative relational and reflexive understanding of world politics.
Dialectical Dialogues
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This book project is a series of dialogues between theorists who deploy dialectical thinking, with a specific focus on how such approaches help us to understand social transformation and change. Taking an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective to dialectics, the volume canvasses approaches to dialectics including: Budhism and dialectics (with Jay Garfield), Daoism and dialectics (with LHM Ling), Classical Greek dialectics (with Dmitri Nikulin), Critical Realism and dialectics (with Heikki Patomäki), and postcolonial theory and dialectics (with Anna Agathangelou).
A Changing Cuba (with Samid Suliman)
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This is an ongoing research project into the social, political, environmental, and economic transformation of Cuba. Based on field research and elite interviews across a range of professions in Havana and Santiago, the project aims to offer a greater understanding the processes of changes underway in Cuban social-life. This project is part of a collaboration with researchers/translators at the Universidad de Oriente Santiago de Cuba.