Scholar

Wendy Brown

University of California, Berkeley

Wendy Brown is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also affiliated with the Rhetoric Department and the Critical Theory Program.  She is a visiting faculty member of the University of London (Birkbeck) Critical Theory Summer School, and a past fellow of the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is a scholar of Western political thought, both historical and contemporary, who aims to make political theory illuminate contemporary problems.

Her current research examines challenges for democracy generated by neoliberal governance and austerity politics.  Recent books include Walled States, Waning Sovereignty; Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Empire and Identity; and Edgework: Critical Essays in Knowledge and Politics.

Degrees

• B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz, 1977
• M.A., Princeton University, 1980
• Ph.D., Princeton University, 1983