Maxime Lepoutre

My research interests lie primarily at the intersection of political theory and social epistemology. Over the past few years, I've been especially interested in the norms that should govern political discourse in divided societies.

Here are some of the more specific questions I'm interested in:

What is the role of negative emotions, such as anger, in democratic public discourse?
How should we deal with hateful utterances or campaigns of misinformation? In particular, can we neutralise their harms through "more speech"?
How much of an obstacle do partisan divisions pose for fruitful deliberation?
Postgraduate supervision
I am interested in supervising students working in contemporary political theory, particularly on the topics of democracy, free speech (including hate speech and misinformation), or political emotions (e.g. anger, hope).

I joined the Department of Politics and International Relations in January 2021 as Lecturer in Political Theory. Before that, I worked as Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics and Nuffield College, Oxford (2018-2002), and as Residential Fellow at the University of Connecticut (2019).