Teresa Bejan wins top award from GRIPP Montreal for her forthcoming book on equality
DPIR’s Professor of Political Theory Teresa Bejan has won the 2023 Groupe de recherche en philosophie politique (GRIPP) de Montréal Annual Political Theory Manuscript Workshop Award for her book manuscript-in-progress, tentatively entitled First Among Equals: A History of Equality in Theory and Practice.
Her manuscript sheds light on contemporary confusions - and frustrations - with equality by recovering its various meanings historically, from ancient Greece to early modern England.
In it, Professor Bejan argues that many contemporary tensions and contradictions society is wrestling with can be traced to 17th-century efforts by English radicals to convert the “equality” of human beings from an ancient commonplace with deep roots in Roman law and Christianity into a pressing, practical truth.
An associated workshop - co-sponsored by Montreal’s McGill University’s Research Group in Constitutional Studies - was held at the university at the end of May. It brought together more than 30 faculty and students from across Canada to read and comment on the draft manuscript.
GRIPP comprises a stellar group of political theorists, and so winning the manuscript workshop award was a huge honour.
Better yet, the feedback I received from the workshop has been invaluable—I’m looking forward to revising on the basis of their perceptive criticisms and advice.
After revising and submitting her manuscript, Professor Bejan will turn her attention to editing the Clarendon edition of John Locke’s Letters on Toleration for Oxford University Press She is also writing a short book on Locke’s modern reputation as the “Father of Liberalism” for Penguin.
Founded in 2008, GRIPP brings together faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students in political theory and political philosophy from McGill, the University of Montreal, the University of Quebec at Montreal, and Concordia University.
