Academic Staff: Matt Sleat

Dr. Matt Sleat, BA (Leicester), MA (York), PhD (York)

Lecturer
Telephone: +44 (0)114 22 21692
Room: G.54 Elmfield

Profile

Dr. Matt Sleat joined the Department in 2007, having previously been a fellow in Government at the LSE and a visiting fellow at the Social and Political Theory Research Programme at the Australia National University.

Teaching

At a time of immense political, social and economic uncertainty, both at home and abroad, political theory has an important and distinctive contribution to make both to helping us understand these issues but also in thinking normatively about we should respond to them. Through my teaching I endeavour to provide students with the intellectual tools to think critically, analytically, consistently, but most of all, imaginatively about politics in order to equip them to engage in these discussions. I take teaching to be continuous with my research, rather than something discrete from it. As such, I try and ensure that my modules are kept as up-to-date as possible in relation to recent developments in the academic literature as well as in the real world of domestic and international politics. And while political theory can often be abstract and seemingly detached from politics itself, through my teaching I aim to make it as accessible and relevant as possible without losing either its analytical rigour or the radicalness of its different visions for our shared political life.

In May 2012 I received a Senate Award for Excellence in Learning & Teaching, in the Early Career category.

Current Reseach

My research largely focuses on the following areas:

Contemporary liberal thought and its critics
Realist political theory
History of modern political theory
Constitutional theory
Just war theory
Pragmatism

Key Publications

Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming - 2013)
'Hope and Disappointment in Politics', Contemporary Politics (forthcoming - 2013)
'Coercing Non-Liberals', European Journal of Political Theory (forthcoming - 2013)
'Legitimacy in a Non-Ideal Key', Political Theory, Vol. 40, No.5 (2012), p. 650-656
'Liberal Realism: A Liberal Response to the Realist Challenge', The Review of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 3 (2011), p. 469-496
'Bernard Williams and the Possibility of a Realist Political Theory’, European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2010), p. 485-503
'Making Sense of our Political Lives – The Political Philosophy of Bernard Williams’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2007), p. 389-398
‘On the Relationship between Truth and Liberal Politics', Inquiry, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2007), p. 288-305
‘Liberalism, Fundamentalism and Truth’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2006), p. 405-417

Recent Invited Papers and Keynote Lectures

Symposium on Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics, University of Exeter, Dec. 2012
‘Legitimacy in Realist Thought: Between Moralism and Realpolitik’, University of Cambridge (Contemporary Political Theory seminar), Nov. 2012
‘The Costs of Politics: Towards a Realist Theory of Liberal Legitimacy’, University of Wales, Newport, May 2011
‘Coercing Non-Liberals’, University of Cardiff, Feb. 2011

Current PhD Supervision

Carlo Cordasco - Rethinking Spontaneous Order: norms, institutions and legitimacy
Janosch Prinz – Political Realism and Critical Theory

I would be happy to supervise research in the following broad areas:

Contemporary liberal theory
Challenges to liberalism
Realist political thought
Pragmatism and political theory
History of modern political theory