Research Associate

I am a political theorist with research interests in the history of 19th and 20th century political thought (especially Spain and Europe), democratic theory, elitism, liberalism/neoliberalism, and political utopia/dystopia. My book manuscript, Democracy and Disorientation: José Ortega y Gasset’s Post-Imperial Liberalism, engages with Spanish liberal José Ortega y Gasset’s thought and its significance for larger debates surrounding liberalism, democracy, and fascism. Based on extensive archival research and a comprehensive reading of his corpus, I argue that the loss of the Spanish Empire inflected Ortega’s liberal-democratic commitments in ways that made him a key figure in the development of Spanish fascism. I am also currently laying the groundwork for several additional projects: one that explores the theroetical connections between European integration, liberal democracy, and imperial decline through the writings of Spanish diplomat and historian Salvador de Madariaga; and another that examines how the Spanish Civil War influenced the development of a distinctively ‘dystopian’ ethos in the work of George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, and Richard Wright.