Field of Study | PhD in Political Science
PhD in Political Science
Courses | Fields of Study | Requirements 🗗 | Funding 🗗 | Admissions 🗗
Political Theory offers students opportunities to engage in the rational scrutiny and moral assessment of political behavior, expectations, and experience from a broad variety of perspectives. Faculty members have teaching and research strengths in global and comparative political theory, the history of political thought, democratic theory, feminist theory, the philosophy of social science, contemporary political philosophy, the history and theory of tolerance, and the enlightenment. They offer an exciting array of seminars covering historical, topical, and interdisciplinary approaches to political theory, and they encourage students to develop both an expertise in their areas of specialization and a broad understanding of the practice of the discipline of political science. As graduate research assistants, our students work with faculty on books and articles for conference presentation and publication as early as their first year of study.
Political theory students and faculty, colleagues from other subfields, and members of many other departments attend regular meetings of the Theory Convocation, an informal setting for the presentation of work in progress by local and visiting scholars. The Theory program also sponsors an annual conference on topics in political theory, and is presently the administrative home of the Texas Chapter of the Conference for the Study of Political Thought. The work of students of political theory receives assistance not only from the Department of Political Science, but also from the Center for Humanities Research, the College of Liberal Arts, and other related departments and research groups.
