The Department of Political Science is proud to announce the addition of a new faculty member, Assistant Professor Robert Nichols. Before coming to Minnesota, Professor Nichols held pre-and post-doctoral positions at the University of Alberta and Humboldt University of Berlin. He received his PhD in Political Theory at the University of Toronto, and a Masters degree from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge and a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University in New York.Professor Nichols’ background and research fields consist of two overlapping areas: 19th and 20th century Critical Theory, with an emphasis on European political theory and philosophy; and Anti-Colonial thought, concerning empire, imperialism, and colonization. Much of his work draws from traditions of critical theory, applying them to problems related to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the forms of colonization specific to the English-speaking settler world. Born and raised in Canada, Professor Nichols provides the university with a more expansive political and global perspective, which is one of the many reasons why he is viewed as such a valuable asset.
Having some prior knowledge and familiarity with the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Professor Nichols couldn’t be more enthused about joining a department that he feels "has a strong history and tradition of critical political theory…and a historically strong place for the study of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous studies, and American Indian studies.”
Professor Nichols is currently teaching a 4000 level class titled “Imperialism and Modern Political Thought”, which deals with a range of both European and non-European thinkers from the 19th and 20th century who thought about problems relating to empires and imperialism. In addition to the graduate seminar he’s teaching this fall, Professor Nichols will be teaching a course on Classical Greek political philosophy as well as an intro course to political theory during the Fall 2016 semester.
When he’s not in the classroom instilling curiosity in his students, he's working on his new book titled, The Colonial Contract, which seeks to provide a theoretically rich explication of the historical experience of colonial dispossession in the Anglo-American settler societies throughout the period of 1783 to 1888. Nichols asserts, "the main goal is to look at how different kinds of political struggles generate different types of concepts, and how those concepts are used to organize, explain, and critique those processes.”
