Lecturer in Political Theory
(PhD Nottingham)
Director: MA Politics
Contact Details
Room 22.104
tel: ++44 (0) 28 9097 5045
email: s.mcmanus@qub.ac.uk
Teaching Areas
I teach a range of contemporary post-structuralist and critical political theory at all levels, including my own level three module, Contemporary Social and Political Thought that covers important radical thinkers in the modern canon of political theory (Spinoza, Marx, Nietzsche) in order to provide a historical and theoretical context for understanding crucial twentieth and twenty-first century critical political theorists (including Adorno, Foucault, Negri, et al). At Master’s level, I teach a range of critical cosmopolitan perspectives in Beyond the Nation, and also contribute to Approaches to Social Science Research.
Research Interests
My research interests lie in the fields of poststructuralist, utopian, and radical political theory, both historical and contemporary. I am particularly interested in the ways in which questions of truth and knowledge, critique, political imagination, and hopeful, transformative political agency can be reconceived by contemporary theoretical work within late-modern conditions. I have done research on questions of truth and fiction inpolitical theory and contemporary utopianism, and am currently developing research projects on affective political agency and theorizing global resistance.
Recent/Selected Publications
“Truth, Temporality, and Theorizing Resistance,” in, Exploring the Utopian Impulse: Essays in Utopian Thought and Practice, Eds., Michael J. Griffin and Tom Moylan (
“Theorizing Utopian Agency: Two Steps Toward Utopian Techniques of the Self,” Theory and Event, (Vol 10, issue 3, 2007)
Fictive Theories: Toward a Deconstructive and Utopian Political Imagination (
“Roland Barthes,” Contemporary Critical Theorists, Ed. Jon Simons (
“Fabricating the Future: Becoming Bloch’s Utopians,” in, Utopian Studies 14/2 (2003): 1-22