Daniel Hutton Ferris
Lecturer in Political Theory and Philosophy
Newcastle University
About
I'm a political theorist at Newcastle University.
Before coming to Newcastle I was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University's Center for Ethics and studied in Oxford, Frankfurt and Toronto.
My main research interest is in democratic theory; I interpret and evaluate novel forms of representation and participation.
I also work on the history of political thought and comparative political theory.
Publications
"Decolonizing Democratic Theory: A Democratic Case for Unelected Indigenous Governments"
Canadian Journal of Political Science
with Daniel Sherwin.
Journal of Politics
"Lottocracy or Psephocracy? Democracy, Elections, and Random Selection"
European Journal of Political Theory (2025).
American Journal of Political Science (2024)
Click here for a short summary on the AJPS blog.
"Democratic Peace Beyond Westphalia: Kang and Kant"
Comparative Political Theory (2023)
"Civic Virtue in the Deliberative System"
Journal of Deliberative Democracy (2019)
Work in Progess
An article evaluating the democratic credentials of north-American Indigenous customary governments.
An article on democratic responsiveness and ranked choice voting in the US.
An article developing a theory of democratic writing, with Zak Black.
Other Writing
"How Zohran Mamdani’s ‘talent for listening’ spurred him to victory in the New York mayoral election"
The Conversation, 2025.
Review of Simone Chambers, Contemporary Democratic Theory
Review of Politics, 87.1.
"Kang Youwei: the revolutionary thinker and reformer behind modern China's transformation"
The Conversation, 2024.