Dr Mathias Thaler

IAS Spotlight Series: Pacifism and Nonviolence

University of Edinburgh

Mathias Thaler is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory 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. He currently serves as Co-Director of Research in the School of Social and Political Science.

His publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Constellations, Contemporary Political Theory, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, Environmental Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Political Studies, Political Theory, Polity and Review of Politics. Thaler is also the author of Naming Violence: A Critical Theory of Genocide, Torture and Terrorism (Columbia University Press 2018), Moralische Politik oder politische Moral? Eine Analyse aktueller Debatten zur internationalen Gerechtigkeit (Campus 2008), and co-editor (with Mihaela Mihai) of On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies (Palgrave 2014) and of Political Violence and the Imagination (Routledge 2020).

His recent research has been funded by the European Commission, through a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (2013–2017), and by the Leverhulme Trust, through a Research Fellowship (2020–2021). Thaler has moreover been the recipient of competitive awards from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Theodor Körner Fonds and the Gulbenkian Foundation, amongst others. 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.