About

I am a political theorist with research interests in the history of 19^th and 20^th century political thought (especially Spain), José Ortega y Gasset, democratic theory, elitism, liberalism/neoliberalism, and political utopia/dystopia. Currently, I am Research Associate (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at Goethe University Frankfurt (Institute for Political Science).

My book manuscript, Liberalism and the Disorientations of Democracy: José Ortega y Gasset in the Ruins of Empire, engages with Spanish liberal José Ortega y Gasset’s thought and its significance for larger debates surrounding liberalism, democracy, and fascism. Based on extensive archival research and a comprehensive reading of his corpus, I argue that the loss of the Spanish Empire inflected Ortega’s liberal-democratic commitments in ways that made him a key figure in the development of Spanish fascism. Research from this project has been published in the journals Political Theory, History of Political Thought, and Hispanic Research Journal. I also have recently published a book chapter on Ortega and mass society theory in The Oxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism.