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 thought, political philosophy, democratic and critical theory, and aesthetics.

My work explores the conceptual history of slavery in Western political thought with a special focus on abolitionist politics. In my first book 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 that declared universal emancipation 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 was generously supported by the Dissertation Fellowship of the Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence, the NSSR Prize Fellowship, and a DAAD Visiting Fellowship from Humboldt University of Berlin. For my teaching at the various colleges of the New School, I was honored with the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award.

You can reach me at schmj813@newschool.edu