Jochen Schmon

I am a PhD candidate in political theory at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), with research interests in the history of political and social thought, democratic and critical theory, race and empire, as well as aesthetics and art theory.  For the academic year of 2026-27, I will be a Doctoral Research Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

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 Modernity and 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 women’s rights and proletarian liberation as well. 

My research is published in Political Concepts and Constellations. I have been generously supported in my work 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