Samuel Clark

I am working towards a PhD in Politics at the University of Reading, under the supervision of Dr. Maxime Lepoutre. My research concerns the ethics and democratic potential of humour in divided societies. Specifically, I am interested in humour's potential to enhance deliberation, how it can be used to talk back to ignorant, bigoted, and hateful speech, and theorizing the conditions that must hold for it to successfully play these roles.

Before I started my PhD in September 2024, I was awarded the W.B. Fisher Prize at Durham University for the highest performing Geography undergraduate in the BA and BSc programmes (2020-23) and the Peter Campbell Prize at the University of Reading for academic excellence in the Politics, Philosophy and Economics Master's programmes (2023-24). I also won the Don and Alleen Nilsen Young Scholar (DANYS) Award at the 2025 meeting of the International Society for Humor Studies.