Enacting the People: Political Representation and Democratic Legitimacy

The conference

Political representation lies at the core of modern politics, yet we remain deeply ambivalent about its worth and significance. Addressing this ambiguity requires a serious exploration into the genealogy of the concept of representation as well as cutting-edge work of conceptual clarification and conceptual innovation confronting the question of what political representation is and/or what it can do, and how. Given the prominence of the idea of representation in democratic theory and democratic practice, none of this would be complete without an attempt to revisit fundamental and vexed problems concerning the relation of representation to democracy.

The York Graduate Conference “Enacting the People: Political Representation and Democratic Legitimacy” is an opportunity for current graduate students and early career researchers to present their research on these and related questions to other graduate students, early career researchers, and senior members of the University of York. Papers will be selected from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, drawn from the humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on political theory, both historical and normative.

The conference will take place on Tuesday 29 September 2015. 

Guest speaker

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Rehfeld (Washington University in St Louis) has kindly agreed to give a talk entitled “On Representing” that will open the academic year at the department and close the conference.

There is no conference fee, but participants are responsible for their own accommodation and travels. A light meal will be offered.