James S. Pearson

My research is principally in democratic theory and political epistemology. I am especially interested in how democratic values fare under non-ideal conditions. I approach this general topic through the following three themes.

Crisis: My objective in this branch of my research is to establish how democracies can overcome crises without violating the principle of democratic self-determination. Can public communicators, for example, resort to alarmism? Or does this unduly undermine the autonomy of the electorate? I am also interested in how crises can stimulate political creativity. Much of this work is applied, and I focus on various concrete crises, though at present my research centres on the potential crisis presented by digital technologies, especially generative AI.

Creativity: My current project at the University of Lisbon examines the political value of creativity. I take creative autonomy to be an essential ingredient of democratic flourishing, though I also explore how dark creativity might cause social harm. A core question within this branch of my research is how developments in artificial intelligence are transforming our theoretical understanding of creativity.

Conflict: I have authored multiple articles on the importance of conflict for collective flourishing. My book Nietzsche on Conflict, Struggle and War (Cambridge University Press, 2022) investigates Nietzsche’s conviction that non-violent contention is an essential ingredient of political freedom. The book further highlights how his views can be used to challenge prevailing theories of conflict in democratic theory. I have similarly examined how Rawls, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard each conceive of contention as a key source of democratic vitality.

I received my PhD in Philosophy (cum laude) from Leiden University. Prior to this, I earned my MA (with distinction) from the University of Warwick, and my undergraduate MA (with first-class honours) from the University of Dundee.

I have also been a visiting scholar in Philosophy at the University of Oxford (2012) and in Political Science at Stanford University (2024).

Since 2023, I've been working at the University of Amsterdam as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science. This position is funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellowship.

In 2022, I began a 6-year research position at the Centre of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon (CFUL). This position has been suspended for the duration of my fellowship at the University of Amsterdam.

Between 2019 and 2022, I worked as a Postdoc in Practical Philosophy at the University of Tartu (Estonia). This was part of an individual research project on multicultural disagreement (funded by the European Commission).

From 2017 to 2019, I worked as a Lecturer in Philosophy at Leiden University. 

My PhD (2012–2017) at Leiden University was fully funded by the NWO (Dutch Research Council) as part of the research programme "Between Deliberation and Agonism: Rethinking Conflict and its Relation to Law in Political Philosophy."