apta The Association of Political Theory in Africa (APTA) is the leading forum for the development and exchange of political ideas to overcome the challenges facing Africa today.

APTA will host its first Annual General Meeting in the summer of 2019/2020. The interim acting directors include:

Lawrence Hamilton:
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Lawrence Hamilton is Professor of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He holds the SARChI/Newton SA-UK Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, Wits and Cambridge, where he teaches and researches on various topics in political theory, South African politics and the history of political and economic thought. He contributes to rethinking political theory from the perspective of the global South around five main themes: needs, interests and rights; freedom, resistance and democracy; states, markets and political judgement; the ethics and economics of Amartya Sen; and decolonizing republics. He has held visiting positions in Salvador, Caracas, Cape Town and Cambridge, is an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and is editor-in-chief of Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory. His many articles and books include Amartya Sen (Polity 2019), Freedom is Power: Liberty Through Political Representation (Cambridge University Press 2014), Are South Africans Free? (Bloomsbury 2014) and The Political Philosophy of Needs (Cambridge University Press 2003). He is currently working on another book: Human Needs, Human Rights and Political Judgement. He directs APTA and the Witwatersrand-Cambridge Exchange Programme, and is the recipient of over twelve awards for research excellence. He is the only political scientist ever to receive an A-rating from the South African National Research Foundation (NRF).

Bernard Matolino:

Bernard Matolino is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus. His research interests are mainly in African philosophy and race and racism. He has supervised to completion seven Masters and six PhD candidates. He has authored over 30 peer reviewed book chapters and journal articles. He has three monographs to his name: Personhood in African Philosophy (2014); Consensus as Democracy in Africa (2018) and Afro-Communitarian Democracy (forthcoming Lexington (2019)).

Laurence Piper:
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Laurence Piper is a Political Scientist at the University of the Western Cape interested in urban governance, democracy, state-society relations and citizenship in South Africa and comparatively. His latest book is ‘Democracy Disconnected: Participation and Governance in a City of the South’ , Routledge, 2018, with Dr Fiona Anciano. He is the previous President of the South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS) 2016-8.

Christine Hobden:

Christine is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. Her research interests include global justice, citizenship, collective responsibility, and international normative thought. Christine completed her DPhil thesis under the supervision of Prof. David Miller and Prof. Cecile Fabre at Nuffield College, University of Oxford in September 2015. Her thesis, ‘States, Citizens & Global Injustice: The Political Channels of Responsibility’, sets out an account of the duties of states to each other, and the consequent responsibilities that citizens of liberal western democracies acquire. Previously Christine was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Italy, under the mentorship of Prof. Rainer Baübock. Her early training was at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she completed a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Law, and a BA Honours and MA in Philosophy. Following this she read for an MPhil in Political Theory at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2014 Christine was a visiting student at Princeton University as a part of the Oxford Princeton Global Norms Collaboration.

Paulin Hountondji:

Paulin J. Hountondji is a Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Benin Republic, joint-laureate of Mohamed El Fasi 2004 prize. He is the Director of the African Centre of Higher Education in Porto-Novo. The American version of his book philosophie africaine: critique de l’ethnophilosophie (Paris, Maspero 1976) (African philosophy, Myth and Reality, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1983) was awarded the Herskovits Prize in 1984. The book is part of the 100 best African books of the 20th century selected in Accra in the year 2000. Hountondji has recently published The Struggle for Meaning: Reflections on Philosophy, Culture and Democracy in Africa (Ohio University Press, 2002) and edited several publications, including Endogenous Knowledge: Research Trails, (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1997). Paulin J. Hountondji has served as the Vice-President of the International Board of Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPH) and also of CODESRIA.

Terrell Carver

Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK. He is a graduate of Columbia University (BA) and Oxford University (BPhil, DPhil), and has held appointments at the University of Liverpool and the University of Bristol, the latter since 1980. His visiting professorships and sabbatical appointments include appointments at Virginia Commonwealth University; the Australian National University; Seikei University and Senshu University, Tokyo; Lingnan University, Hong Kong; the Claremont Colleges in California; and he teaches a summer school course in Discourse Analysis at the National University of Singapore. He is on the Executive Committees of the International Political Science Association, the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, and the European Consortium of Political Science Associations. Dr Carver has published extensively on Marx, Engels and Marxism, and Sex, Gender and Sexuality. As a Marxist scholar he has published texts, translations, commentaries and numerous philosophical articles, book chapters and edited volumes. His latest publications are a two-volume study of the “German Ideology Manuscripts” for Palgrave Macmillan, New York (2014), and the Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto (Cambridge University Press, New York, in press). In gender studies he is the author of numerous reference book articles; co-author of Judith Butler and Political Theory (Routledge, 2008); co-editor of Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics (Routledge, 2008); and most recently author of ‘Men and Masculinities in International Relations Research’ for the Brown Journal of World Affairs (December 2014).