Professor Lawrence Hamilton

  • Research Professor
Available to supervise doctoral students
Available to supervise masters students
Professor Lawrence Hamilton

Contact

About

Lawrence holds the SA UK Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, Witwatersrand and Cambridge, where he teaches and researches on various topics in political theory, the history of political and economic thought and South African politics. He has held visiting positions in Salvador, Caracas, Cape Town and São Paulo, is an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and author or editor of eight books. He is currently working on a book on the future of democracy and political judgement. He directs APTA, the Witwatersrand-Cambridge Exchange Programme and Critical South, a blog and podcast.

Research

His research interests include various topics in political theory, South African political economy and the history of political and economic thought. He contributes to rethinking political theory from the perspective of the global South around four main themes: needs, interests, rights and utopia; freedom, resistance, representation, political judgement and democracy; rethinking development; and decolonizing republics.

Key publications:    

Books

Articles

  • ‘Representative Democracy Against Oligarchy’, New Political Science (forthcoming 2025)
  • ‘The Power of Political Representation’, with L. Disch, N. Urbinati, L. Thomassen, and M. B. Vieira, Contemporary Political Theory, 16 December 2023 (online), DOI: 10.1057/s41296-023-00665-x
  • ‘Amílcar Cabral and Amartya Sen: Freedom, Resistance and Radical Realism’, Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political, Issue 167,Vol. 68, No. 2 (June 2021), pp. 82-110, DOI: 10.3167/th.2021.6816704
  • ‘Resistance and radical democracy: freedom, power and institutions', History of European Ideas, 44.4 (2018), pp. 477-491 DOI:10.1080/01916599.2018.1473961
  • 'Freedom in the Decolonizing Republic', The Good Society, 26.1 (2018), pp. 120-134, DOI: 10.5325/goodsociety.26.1.0120
  • ‘Representation Needs Resistance’, Representation 53.1 (2017), pp. 81-95
  • ‘Representing Needs: A New Language for Politics and Economics’, in Beyond Neoliberalism, Nationalism and Socialism: rethinking the boundary between state and market, ed. T. Aubrey (Rowman & Littlefield 2017), pp. 59-70 (republished in Italian in Lessico di Etica Pubblica, 1 (2022), pp. 31-40).
  • ‘Democratic Theory: The South African Crucible’, Democratic Theory (Non-Western Theories of Democracy), 2.2 (2015)
  • ‘Power, Domination and Human Needs’, Thesis Eleven, 119.1 (2013)
  • ‘Collective Unfreedom in South Africa’, Contemporary Politics, 17.4 (2011)
  • ‘Debt, Democracy and Representation in South Africa’, with Nicola Viegi, Representation 45.2 (2009)
  • ‘Human Needs and Political Judgment’, in New Waves in Political Philosophy eds Zurn & de Bruin (Palgrave 2009)
  • ‘Human Needs, Land Reform and the South African Constitution’, Politikon, 33.2 (2006)
  • ‘A Theory of True Interests in the Work of Amartya Sen’, Government and Opposition 34. 4 (1999)

For a full list of publications (including on-line papers) click here

Teaching and supervision

Available to supervise doctoral students
Available to supervise masters students

Research supervision: 

Lawrence is happy to be approached by prospective masters and doctoral students.