What makes the environment especially rich is the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique (GRIPP) — a bilingual, multidisciplinary research community drawing faculty and doctoral students from the philosophy and political science departments of all four Montreal universities. There is nothing else like it in North America. GRIPP supports graduate research through fellowships, workshops, and conferences, and creates real intellectual community across institutional and linguistic lines.

PhD students in political theory are also admitted as doctoral fellows of the Research Group on Constitutional Studies (RGCS), part of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. The fellowship brings shared office space and a library of political theory and philosophy books — all in Ferrier Hall, where most of the political theory faculty also have their offices and where much of the day-to-day intellectual life of the program happens.

I supervise MA and PhD students in Political Science and sit on advisory committees in several other disciplines. The research and writing pages give a good sense of where my interests lie. I work in the history of political thought, critical theory, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and continental political, social, and cultural theory, including postcolonial and some international theory.

A few things worth knowing about how I work: I think of supervision as a genuine intellectual relationship, not a bureaucratic one. I try to be accessible, direct, and honest — about your work, about the profession, and about my own limitations. I also want to be clear that pursuing an academic career is not the only valid outcome of a PhD, and I take seriously my responsibility to support students on whatever path they choose.

La supervision en français ? Avec plaisir.

Admissions are handled by a departmental committee, so you don't need to contact me before applying. If you think there's a real fit between your interests and mine, feel free to send a short note — I'm happy to hear from you. I can't respond to requests outside my areas, and I'm not able to meet individually with prospective students before the application deadline, much as I'd like to.

The department's admissions FAQ, the application checklist, and the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies website have everything you need to know. Both programs are competitive — the department receives 150–200 PhD applications and 300–400 MA applications each year.

The academic job market is in serious trouble. Decades of declining public investment in higher education, the well-advanced and rapidly accelerating corporatization of the university, and the systematic replacement of tenure-track positions with precarious, poorly paid contract work have fundamentally transformed the conditions of academic labour. Tenure-track positions in political science — and in political theory especially, a small subfield with few openings in good years — are scarce and becoming scarcer. This is not a temporary disruption but a structural shift, and anyone considering a PhD should think hard about it before applying. I believe doctoral study is valuable in its own right, and I am committed to my students' success on whatever path they pursue — but I would be doing prospective students a disservice if I did not name this reality plainly.