Rate My Professor David Jenkins

Dr David Jenkins is a Senior Lecturer in political theory in the Politics programme at the University of Otago, located in Room 4N8 on the 4th floor of the Arts (Burns) Building. He earned his BA from the University of Birmingham, MSc from the University of London, and DPhil from the University of London. Before entering academia, Jenkins worked as a civil servant in the housing sector in London, UK. After completing his doctorate, he held the Krzysztof Michalski Junior Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2015, served as a Teaching Fellow at University College London from 2016 to 2017, and occupied a postdoctoral research position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Warwick from 2017 to 2020.

Jenkins's research specializations encompass social rights, populism, Japanese philosophy, conservatism, commuting, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala, civic friendship, housing rights and homelessness, terrorism, police abolitionism, and the writings of James Baldwin and José Saramago. His current projects include a book on populism, a book on social rights co-authored with Kimberley Brownlee, and a podcast and book on the CPIM in collaboration with Lipin Ram. Key publications feature co-editing Being Social: The Philosophy of Social Human Rights (2020) with Kimberley Brownlee and Adam Neal; 'Mono no aware: How conservatives should do change' in Res Publica (2024); 'Gentrification as domination' in Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy (2025); 'Understanding and evaluating populist strategy' in Philosophy & Social Criticism (2025); 'Work relationships and autonomy' in Journal of Value Inquiry (2025, with Adam Neal); and 'Social access and inclusion' in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Human Rights (2026, with Kimberley Brownlee). He teaches POLS 110: Political Ideas in Action, POLS 244: Political Theory: Basic Problems, and POLS 501: The 'Political': Theory and Practice, and supervises postgraduate research in contemporary political theory and history of political thought, including topics on housing, political parties, and unconditional basic income.