School of Social and Political Science

Background

Current project: Fail Again, Fail Better? Recuperating Failure in Utopian Politics and Research
[AHRC Networking Grant, together with Davina Cooper (KCL) and Ruth Houghton (Newcastle)]

Book: No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a Climate-Changed World
[For a 20% discount, enter the code THALER22 at the checkout.]

Mathias Thaler is Professor of Political Theory in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. His main research interest is in contemporary political theory. Thaler regularly teaches courses on democratic theory, populism, human rights and the morality of war and violence. From 2020 to 2023, he served as Co-Director of Research in the School of Social and Political Science.

Thaler is the author of No Other Planet (Cambridge University Press 2022), Naming Violence (Columbia University Press 2018), Moralische Politik oder politische Moral? (Campus 2008), and co-editor (with Mihaela Mihai) of Political Violence and the Imagination (Routledge 2020) and of On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies (Palgrave 2014). His papers have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Environmental Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Political Studies, Political Theory, and Review of Politics, amongst others.

His recent research has been funded through a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant from the European Commission (2013–2017), through a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (2020–2021) and through an AHRC Networking Grant (2023–2024). Thaler has moreover been the recipient of competitive awards from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Theodor Körner Fonds and the Gulbenkian Foundation, as well as smaller funders. Over the past ten years, Thaler has held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, the Université de Montréal, KU Leuven and the University of Sydney.

Download CV.

PhD supervision

In Progress

• Grace Garland (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2020–).
• Talia Shoval (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2019–).

Completed

• Louis Fletcher (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2015–2020) - Research Fellow at Warwick Business School.
• Gisli Vogler (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2016–2019) - Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
• Alec Ross (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2017–2021) - Senior Tutor at the University of Edinburgh.
• Lukas Slothuus (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2015–2022) - Research Fellow at the University of Sussex.
• Max Rozenburg (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2018–2024) - Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle.
• Camilo Ardila Arévalo (PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2018–2024) - Teaching Fellow at the University of St Andrews.