Academy of Social Sciences welcomes Cardiff Professor of Political Theory

A School of Law and Politics Professor of Political Theory has been elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences this September.

Professor Graeme Garrard is part of a cohort of 63 social scientists who join the Fellowship this autumn.

The Academy’s Fellowship comprises over 1,500 leading social scientists from academia, the public, private and third sectors. Their expertise covers the breadth of the social sciences, and their practice and research addresses some of the major challenges facing communities, society, places and economies. All Academy Fellows are selected through an independent peer review which recognises their excellence and impact, including their wider contributions to social sciences for public benefit.

Professor Garrard has worked at Cardiff University since completing his DPhil at Oxford University in the mid-1990s. In that time, he has gained international prominence as a scholar of the Enlightenment and its critics, from the 18th century to the present. He has published many scholarly articles on politics and 4 books, most recently a defence of a strong, activist state against both the theory and practice of neoliberalism, for Yale University Press (2022).  Dr Garrard has taught at universities in Britain, the United States, France and the Czech Republic.  He was an instructor in Government at the Harvard Summer School for 12 years (2006 – 2018) and has been a Visiting Associate Professor at Dartmouth College and Williams College in the United States, as well as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.  He became a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2024.

Professor Garrard said of his achievement, “I am honoured to join the Academy's distinguished fellowship.  For over 4 decades now, it has done fantastic work promoting social science and influencing public policy and research. Its Campaign for Social Science is a model of advocacy that aims at improving public understanding and promoting the public good.  As a fellow, I look forward to contributing to these goals and supporting the Academy's mission to raise the standard of UK public life and debate.”

The full list of this autumn’s Fellows can be found on the Academy of Social Sciences website.