Research Groups: Political Theory
The Political Theory group at Sheffield brings together academics, research students and MA students working in the fields of political theory and the history of political thought to create a vibrant and exciting research community. The group welcomes and encourages research from all theoretical traditions and provides a distinctive opportunity for students to develop their interests in a supportive and diverse environment.
There is also a strong commitment to relating theoretical and normative issues to other dimensions of political study, with a particular interest in how the normative conclusions and considerations of political theory relate to or play out in terms of actual political practice and policy.
Research Projects
Comparative Political Theory
Conceptual and Historical Study of Political Ideologies
Andrew Vincent is the author of the well known study Modern Political Ideologies (Basil Blackwell). He is an associate editor of the international periodical The Journal of Political Ideologies, and the author of The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford UP) and Nationalism and Particularity (Cambridge UP).
Michael Kenny, with Matthew Festentein, recently worked on a companion volume entitled Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide (Oxford UP), which was published by Oxford University Press in January 2005.
Recent and current research projects include work on rights and idealism (Vincent), liberalism (Vincent and Kenny), Anglo-America and Englishness (Kenny) and international political theory (Brown).
Contemporary Political Thought
Members of the political theory group have published a variety of works in this field and made contributions to some of the major debates in political philosophy and contemporary political theory.
Garrett Brown works in the related fields of Kantian and cosmopolitian political theory, and has a forthcoming book entitled Cosmopolitanism with Polity Press.
Andrew Vincent is the author of The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford UP), Nationalism and Particularity (Cambridge UP, 2002). Professor Vincent also recently published The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford UP,2005), which won the Political Studies Association McKenzie Prize.
Michael Kenny is currently undertaking a project on the nature of Englishness, and has recently published The Politics of Identity (Polity, 2005). Together with Randall Germain, he has edited the book The Idea of Global Civil Society (Routledge, 2005), which was based on the conference 'Global Civil Society', which he jointly organised a few years ago. Professor Kenny is also on the editorial board of the journal Contemporary Political Theory.
There are current research projects in the following areas: cultural pluralism and liberalism, democratic theory, as well as various forms of governance.
History of Modern Political Thought
Members of the Department have published and supervised dissertations on a variety of topics in the history of political thought. There is particular strength in the areas of nineteenth and twentieth century British and American political thought, idealism, pragmatism, and progressive and radical currents of political thought.
Andrew Vincent is the author (with Raymond Plant) of Philosophy, Politics, and Citizenship (Blackwell,1984), the standard scholarly reference point for all work on British idealism and late Victorian and Edwardian political thought, British Idealism and Political Theory (with David Boucher) (Edinburgh,2001), and A Radical Hegelian: The Social and Political Philosophy of Henry Jones (with David Boucher) (University of Wales and St Martin's Press,1995). He is also the editor of The Philosophy of T. H. Green (Avebury,1986), and The Philosophical Propaedeutic by G. W. F. Hegel (Blackwell,1986).
Michael Kenny is the author of The First New Left (Lawrence and Wishart).
The State
One of the particular specialisms of several members of the group is historical and normative political treatments of the state.
Andrew Vincent is the author of the widely cited study on this topic, Theories of the State (Blackwell,1987).