Subfield Coordinator: Anna Stilz
Berkeley’s department offers a broad range of courses in political theory, spanning the history of thought and contemporary theory. As a group, we're committed to the highest levels of scholarship in researching and teaching political thought from antiquity to the present.
Some political theory students may be interested in the Graduate Program in Political Philosophy, offered jointly by the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science. This program offers political theory students an opportunity to receive credit for courses in political philosophy, and to be co-advised by faculty in contemporary political philosophy outside the Political Science department. Click here for more details.
Faculty have particular strengths in ancient, medieval, renaissance, early modern, Enlightenment, and nineteenth-century European thought, and in eighteenth-twentieth century American (including African-American) political thought. Other faculty areas of expertise include liberal and democratic thought, collective agency, global justice, sovereignty, problems of epistemology and historiography, postfoundationalism and its critics, and specific political issues ranging from political identity and subjectivity to migration and climate justice.
