Jochen Schmon

I am a PhD candidate in Politics at The New School for Social Research (NSSR) and, for the academic year of 2026-27, a Visiting Doctoral Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German & European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. My research interests are in the history of political and social thought, political philosophy, democratic and critical theory, aesthetics and art theory. 

My work explores the conceptual history of slavery in Western political thought with a special focus on abolitionist politics. In my dissertation project, titled A Long Nineteenth Century of Abolition: The Beginning of Universal Emancipation, I examine the conceptual reverberations of the abolitionist movement in the discourses of Enlightenment philosophy as well as early feminist and proletarian movements. As the concerted action of the rebelling slaves in the plantation colonies and their non-enslaved supporters,  I argue that the abolitionist tradition inaugurated "modernity" as the very age in which universal emancipation became declared as the categorical imperative of all politics, making possible universalist struggles for the emancipation of non-enslaved women and workers as well. 

My research is published in Constellations, Political Concepts, and is forthcoming at Historical Materialism. Previously, my work has been generously supported by a dissertation fellowship from the Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence, the NSSR Prize Fellowship, and a DAAD Visiting Fellowship.  For my teaching at the New School, I was honored with the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award.

You can reach me at schmj813@newschool.edu