political theory, philosophy, liberty & freedom
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About Me
I am a political theorist working at the intersection of normative philosophy and intellectual history. My primary area of research is liberty/freedom and its related concepts, including oppression, domination, power, agency, citizenship and nationality. I am currently an Associate Professor of Political Theory at Waseda University in Tokyo.
I am the author of Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity (Princeton UP, 2021), which was shortlisted for the ECPR Political Theory Prize, European Consortium for Political Research; shortlisted for the Gladstone Book Prize, Royal Historical Society; and named as one of Bloomberg's Best Nonfiction Books of 2021.
The Chinese (simplified) edition of Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin, published in 2024, was selected as one of the 10 recommended books of the year by Ifeng/凤凰网 and one of the best humanities & history books of the year by the Beijing News/新京报. You can read more about the book in the Journal of the History of Ideas blog.
My other publications include Arendt on Freedom, Liberation and Revolution, which was one of the 'most downloaded philosophy books of 2019' published by Palgrave Macmillan. My academic papers are found here or Google Scholar, and my non-academic pieces are found here. I am a co-founder and Consulting Editor of Arendt Studies. I also served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Practical Ethics between 2012 and 2018.
I am currently working on a short book on Fukuzawa Yukichi’s political thought, building on my earlier publications on his liberal nationalism and liberal imperialism. My other, and more long-term, research project is on Sinophobia in the liberal tradition.
Prior to joining Waseda University in 2025, I was a Lecturer in Philosophy at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (2022–25); Assistant Professor and AIAS-COFUND Fellow at Aarhus University (2019–22); EURIAS Junior Fellow at l’Institut d’études avancées de Paris (2018–19); Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Oxford (2012–18), where I was a Research Fellow of Wolfson College; and a non-residential fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2008–15). I was also a visiting scholar at Columbia University (2010–11), the University of Tokyo (2012), and the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College (2017).
Qualifications, etc.
DPhil (Oxford), MSc (Oxford), MA (Essex), BA (Keio), FRHistS
I studied economics and intellectual history at Keio University, Tokyo; Continental political theory at the University of Essex; and analytical political theory at the University of Oxford. I was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022 and won the JSPS Prize in 2024.
Contact
kei.hiruta{at}waseda.jp
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