Dr Janosch Prinz (J.L.P.)
I am an Assistant Professor in Social and Political Philosophy. I have a longstanding interest in making philosophical tools useful for democratic politics and public discourse. This interest links to my interest in the foundations and social value of philosophical criticism. Current focal points of my research include:
1) methods of political theory and philosophy. I have co-developed the radical approach to realism in political theory/philosophy and continue to work on the prospects of realism as an empirically-grounded and critical approach; I co-host the “Realism beyond Liberalism” working group;
2) the relationship between money creation and democracy (e.g. in the EMU), which I explore in an NWO-Open Competition funded research project (2023-2024);
3) building a democratic theory which addresses the challenge the increasing concentration of power poses to democracy; recent work with Manon Westphal on reinventing the plebeian tribunate has been published in Political Theory.
My research is located at the intersection between normative and empirical forms of inquiry. It aims to bridge methodological and disciplinary divides between normative-analytical, critical-reflective and interpretive political thought, in order to provide reliable orientation for political judgment.
I’ve made methodological, conceptual, and applied contributions which have appeared in Political Theory, Constellations, Polity, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Social Theory and Practice, Inquiry, European Journal of Political Theory, and Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
I am active in academic self-governance and seek to enhance the position of young scholars in academic. I am a member of the Maastricht Young Academy and have been elected to the Council of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2023.
Before joining Maastricht, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in philosophy at University of East Anglia (2017-2019) and a lecturer in political theory at Queen's University Belfast (2015-2017). I hold a PhD from the University of Sheffield and an M.A. from Bonn.
I am further affiliated with the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, based on my collaborative work on the legitimation and political geography of recent counterterrorism and development interventions in the Global South. My work on this line of research has appeared in Geoforum, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, and Alternatives.
Recent publications
Prinz, Janosch and Westphal, Manon (2023): The Tribunate as a Realist Democratic Innovation. In: Political Theory, https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231191089.
Prinz, Janosch and Scerri, Andrew (2023): From politics to democracy? Bernard Williams’ Basic Legitimation Demand in a radical realist lens. In: Constellations, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12710
Cross, Ben and Prinz, Janosch (2023): Can narratives about sovereign debt be generally ideologically suspicious? An exercise in broadening the scope of ideology critique. In: Journal of Social Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12511.
Prinz, Janosch (2022): Realism and Real Politics. In: Critical Review of International Political and Social Philosophy. DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2022.2120655.
Prinz, Janosch and Rossi, Enzo (2022): Financial Power and Democratic Legitimacy: How to Think Realistically about Public Debt. In: Social Theory and Practice 48 (1), 115-140. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract2021121144
Prinz, Janosch and Schetter, Conrad (2021): Spatial-Moral Ordering in the War on Terror: Ungoverned Spaces as a Challenge to Humanitarianism. In: Journal of Statebuilding and Intervention 15 (1): 96-113. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2019.1709771.
Prinz, Janosch and Raekstad, Paul (2020): The Value of Genealogies for Political Philosophy. In: Inquiry, https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2020.1762729.
Prinz, Janosch (2020): Realism in Political Theory, Ethnographic Sensibility and the Moral Agency of Bureaucrats. In: Polity 52 (1): 64-87.
Prinz, Janosch and Rossi, Enzo (2017): Political Realism as Ideology Critique. In: Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (3): 348-365. Reprinted in: Sabl, Andrew and Sagar, Rahul (2018) (eds.): Realism in Political Theory (London: Routledge).
Prinz, Janosch and Schetter, Conrad (2017): Conditioned Sovereignty and the Creation and Legitimation of New Spaces of Violence in the Counterterrorism Operations of the “War on Terror”. In: Alternatives 41 (3): 119-136.
Prinz, Janosch (2016): Raymond Geuss’ Radicalization of Realism in Political Theory. In: Philosophy and Social Criticism 42 (8): 777-796.
