Teresa Bejan

Teresa M Bejan is Professor of Political Theory and a Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford.

Before arriving in Oxford in 2015, she taught as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and as a Mellon Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. She received her PhD in Political Science with distinction from Yale University in 2013, and holds previous degrees from the Universities of Chicago and Cambridge.

Professor Bejan’s research has been recognised by numerous international awards and fellowships, among them the Groupe de recherche en philosophie politique en Montreal’s Political Theory Manuscript Award, the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought’s inaugural Early Career Prize, the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Constitutional and Political Theory at McGill University, the Balzan-Skinner Fellowship in Modern Intellectual History at Cambridge, and the American Political Science Association’s Leo Strauss Award.

In 2021, she was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Politics, which celebrates ‘exceptional researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future careers are exceptionally promising’.

Research Interests

Professor Bejan’s research brings historical perspectives to bear on questions in contemporary political theory. She has published extensively on themes of free speech, civility, equality and tolerance in historical contexts ranging from ancient Athens to 20th-century analytic political philosophy. Alongside her academic work, Professor Bejan writes regularly for popular venues, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Boston Review. She is also a frequent radio and podcast guest for popular programmes including BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time. In 2018, she gave a TED Talk, ‘Is Civility a Sham?,’ which has received over 1.7 million views.

Selected Publications