Professor Derek Edyvane

Profile

I teach political theory, and specialise in the area of contemporary political philosophy. I am particularly interested in issues at the intersection of political theory and everyday life. I have written about political community, civic virtue, citizenship, and civility.

I am founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Political Theory at Leeds. I am also Editor of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Before coming to Leeds, I completed my PhD and held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of York.

Responsibilities

• Editor, British Journal of Politics and International Relations
• Co-Director, Centre for Contemporary Political Theory

Research interests

My recent work has focused on the concepts of incivility and injustice, citizenship and the ethics of political resistance. I am interested in the responsibilities that ordinary citizens have to confront injustice, and in the ethical considerations that bear on that confrontation. I also have longstanding interests in community, multiculturalism, political ethics and political liberalism.

I have published two monographs and more than 30 articles and chapters in journals including Journal of Politics, Political Studies, and European Journal of Political Theory. In 2021, I was awarded the Political Studies Harrison Prize for my article ‘Incivility as Dissent’. I am currently completing a book entitled The Politics of Politeness: Citizenship, Civility, and the Democracy of Everyday Life.

My work has been supported by grants from the AHRC, the ESRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the White Rose Consortium. In 2022-23, I held an AHRC Fellowship for research on the theme of ‘ordinary citizenship’.

I am interested in supervising PhDs and dissertations in all of the areas described, including the following topics:

• The ethics of resistance beyond civil disobedience – political obligation and authority; everyday resistance; hacktivism; vandalism; graffiti; hip-hop; ‘allyship’.
• Everyday citizenship – civility and toleration; diversity, pluralism and multiculturalism; political theory of architecture and the city.
• Political ethics – political vice and virtue; the problem of dirty hands; deception; snobbery; misanthropy.
• The political thought of Judith Shklar, Stuart Hampshire, Alasdair MacIntyre, Bernard Williams.
• Methodology in political theory – especially the uses of ethnography, storytelling, art and literature in political theory.

Student education

I teach at all levels in the School. Recent modules have included 'Freedom, Power and Resistance' (level 1), 'Justice, Community and Conflict' (level 2), and 'Political Theory in Action' (MA)

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Contemporary Political Theory
• Centre for Democratic Engagement

Current postgraduate researchers

• Hope Sara Bachmann