Prof Paul Apostolidis specialises in critical theory and integrating empirical inquiry into methods of political theory. A major arm of his research derives insights for critiques of capitalism and racial domination from fieldwork with Latinx migrant workers’ organisations and communities in the western United States. Precarious work-life and contesting precarity through popular education comprise key themes in his most recent research. Prof Apostolidis’s published writings explore prospects for deeper democracy and social solidarity through reflecting on this empirical work while engaging diverse 20th-21st century thinkers including Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Paulo Freire, Kathi Weeks, Judith Butler, Wendy Brown, Cristina Beltrán, and Lauren Berlant. His earlier research analyses the cultural politics of the US Christian Right through a critical approach derived from Theodor Adorno and he has written extensively in cultural studies, including on issues of gender, sexuality and power.
Prof Apostolidis is the author of The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity (Oxford University Press 2019), Breaks in the Chain: What Immigrant Workers Can Teach America about Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), and Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio (Duke University Press, 2000), as well as co-editor of Public Affairs: Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals (Duke University Press, 2004). He is on the editorial boards of the journals Political Theory and Emancipations, he co-edits the book series ‘Studies in Subaltern Latina/o Politics’ for Oxford University Press, he is affiliated with the LSE’s Phelan United States Centre, and he is a Director of the Radical Critical Theory Circle. Prof Apostolidis has the role of Visiting Expert Scholar with the Mellon-funded research project ‘Latinx Futures: The Civil, Cultural and Political Stakes for Southern California Latinx Communities,’ based at the University of California Riverside. There he is advising the development of a popular education programme with Latinx environmental-justice and immigrant-rights organisations in a region that hosts one of the world’s largest concentrations of warehouse and logistics-industry development. Prof Apostolidis’s current book project, titled Night Work and the Politics of Freedom, investigates the growing phenomenon of night-time labour in dialogue with Karl Marx, Jacques Rancière, Silvia Federici, and other theorists, with a focus on social reproduction, platform labour, the politics of time, and the effects of climate change.
Prof Apostolidis provides academic leadership for numerous civic engagement initiatives at the LSE including CIVICA: The European University of Social Sciences. He is an innovator in the design of public impact-oriented student research projects, including partnerships with NGOs on labour and environmental issues for students in his course GV262 Contemporary Political Theory. He also teaches GV498 Multiculturalism and more generally promotes the development of outstanding research-led and public-oriented education at the LSE through his education-focussed role.
Prof Apostolidis holds the PhD and MA from Cornell University and the AB from Princeton University.