Passionate about Politics: Jody LaPorte
We’ve asked some of our Undergraduate Politics academics, tutors and lecturers to tell us what sparked their interest in the subject, when they were students.
In the third instalment, we talked to Jody LaPorte, Gonticas Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Lincoln College. She was first inspired to study political science after reading Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism.
“Gellner argues that nations and national identities are not fixed, but rather are the result of political decisions and historical processes. It’s a simple point, but it wasn’t something I had really considered before,” she said.
“I read this book as an undergraduate, and it made me realise that we can separate out nations from states, and that these exist separately from political decision-making processes–and more importantly, that we can study each of these things systematically!
“Gellner’s book reframed how I thought about myself, and for me it opened up new ideas about what it means to study politics.”
Further reading:
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