Mihaela Mihai

Professor of Political Theory, University of Edinburgh

Publications

Monographs

  • 2022 Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care. The Art of Complicity and Resistance.  Stanford University Press, Series: Cultural Memory in the Present. Book page.  Winner of ECPR’s Onora O’Neill Prize in Political Theory.
  • 2016 Negative Emotions and Transitional Justice.  Columbia University Press. Book page.

Co-authored book

  • 2026 (With Camil Ungureanu) Resurgent Far-Right Populism in Romania: Disenchantment and Hope at Europe’s Periphery. Routledge, Series: Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy. 

Edited books

  • 2020 (with Mathias Thaler), Political Violence and the Imagination: Complicity, Memory and Resistance (Routledge NY). Book page.
  • 2015 (with Albena Azmanova) Reclaiming Democracy: Judgment, Responsibility and the Right to Politics. Routledge NY. Series: Advances in Democratic Theory. Book page.
  • 2014 (with Mathias Thaler) On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies. Palgrave. Series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Book page.

Blind peer-reviewed articles

  • 2026 (with D. Celermajer) “Collectivising Resonance through Ritual: The Case of Ecological Emotions”. European Journal of Social Theory. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/13684310261425924
  • 2025 (with D. Celermajer) Introduction to Special Issue Eco-emotions: theory, politics, testimony, Environmental Politics, https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2025.2592399.
  • 2024 (with C. Ungureanu) “Far-Right Populism, Ecology and Geopolitical Resentment at the Semi-Periphery: The Case of Romania’s ‘Conservative Revolution’”. Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104122.
  • 2024 “Representing Ecological Grief”. Polity (56(3), https://doi.org/10.1086/730512.
  • 2023 “Environmental Guilt, Political Mourning and Contestatory Citizenship: Responsibility and its Ambiguities”. Parallax, 29(3), 343–363. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2024.2302667. 
  • 2023 (with M. Thaler) “Environmental Commemoration: Guiding Principles and Real-World Cases.” Online first in Memory Studies, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/175069802311760. 
  • 2021 “Foundational Moments, Representative Claims and the Ecology of Social Ignorance.”  Political Studies. Online first, doi.org/10.1177/0032321721995639.
  • 2020 “The Hero’s Silences: Vulnerability, Complicity, Ambivalence”, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2020.1796332.
  • 2019 Engaging Vulnerabilities: An Outline for a Responsive and Responsible Theory. Online first in Journal of Social Philosophy, https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1111/josp.12316. Special issue Understanding Solidarity with Refugees.
  • 2019 “The ‘Affairs’ of Political Memory: Hermeneutical Dissidence from National Myth-Making”, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Volume 24,  Issue 4: Institutional Transformations: Imagination, Embodiment, and Affect, 2019, Pages 52-69, https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1635825
  • 2019 “The Caring Refusenik: A Portrait” forthcoming in Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory,  Volume 26, Issue 1. March 2019, Pages 148-162, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12384.
  • 2018 “Architectural Transitional Justice? Political Renewal within the Scars of a Violent Past” International Journal of Transitional Justice,  Volume 12, Issue 3, November 2018, Pages 515–536, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijy019.
  • 2018 “Understanding complicity: Memory, hope and the imagination” online first in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2019.1565692.
  • 2017 “Epistemic Marginalisation and the Seductive Power of Art”, online first in Contemporary Political Theory, November 2018, Volume 17, Issue 4, pp 395–416, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-017-0186-z.
  • 2016 “Theorizing Change: Between Reflective Judgment and the Inertia of Political Habitus“, European Journal of Political Theory (15):1, pp. 22-42.
  • 2014  “Denouncing Historical ‘Misfortunes’: From Passive Injustice to Reflective Spectatorship,” Political Theory 42, pp. 443–467.
  • 2014 “Theorizing Agonistic Emotions,” Parallax 20(2), pp. 31–48.
  • 2013 “When the State Says ‘Sorry’: State Apologies as Exemplary Political Judgments,” Journal of Political Philosophy 21(2), pp. 200–220.
  • 2011 “Socialising Negative Emotions: Transitional Criminal Trials in the Service of Democracy,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 31(1), pp. 111–131.
  • 2011 “Emotions and Criminal Law,” Philosophy Compass, 6(9), pp. 599–610.
  • 2010 “Transitional Justice and the Quest for Democracy: A Contribution to a Political Theory of Democratic Transformations,” Ratio Juris. An International Journal in Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law 23(2), pp. 183–204.
  • 2010 “Public Negative Emotions and the Judicial Review of Transitional Justice Bills: Lessons from Three Contexts,” Papeles del Centro de Estudios sobre la Identidad Colectiva 60, pp. 1–29.
  • 2010 “Julgamentos penais em períodos de transição e o desafio das emoções: histórias de dois países” (“Criminal Trials in Periods of Transition and the Challenge of Emotions: Stories from Two Countries”) Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 88, pp. 155–184.

Special issues

  • 2026 Special issue (with Danielle Celermajer) Environmental Politics, 35(1). Title: “Eco-emotions: theory, politics, testimony.”
  • 2024 Co-editor and contributor to Critical Exchange in Contemporary Political Theory. Title: “The epistemology of protest.” https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1057/s41296-023-00650-4 
  • 2021 Special issue Law, Culture and the Humanities: “Violent Complicities beyond the Legal Imagination: Exploring the Epistemic and Political Power of Art.” Co-edited with Maša Mrovlje. Intro online first: https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721211000905
  • 2019 Special Issue co-edited (with M. Thaler),  “Violence and the Imagination: The Politics of Narrative and Representation”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 22, Issue 5, (2019). Co-authored the Introduction to the Special Issue.
  • 2017 Critical Exchange (with M. Thaler and V. Paipais)  in Contemporary Political Theory. Title: “Ontology, Critique and Democracy”
  • 2013 Co-editor and author of the Introduction to the special number of e-cadernos 16: “The Xenophobic Manipulation of Women’s Rights”. Web: http://www.ces.uc.pt/e-cadernos/pages/en/index.php?lang=EN. 

Encyclopaedia entry

Book chapters

  • 2020 “The Architecture of Political Renewal” in Duncan Bell and Bernardo Zacka, Political Theory and Architecture, London: Bloomsbury.
  • 2018 “From Hate to Political Solidarity: The Art of Responsibility” in Thomas Brudholm and Birgitte Schepelern Johansen, Hate, Politics, Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 2015 “Introduction” (with Albena Azamanova) in Albena Azmanova and Mihaela Mihai, Reclaiming Democracy: Judgment, Responsibility and the Right to Politics (Routledge).
  • 2014  “Democratic ‘Sacred Spaces’: Public Architecture and Transitional Justice,” in Nir Eisikovitz, Claudio Corradetti and Jack Volpe Rotondi (eds.), Theorizing Transitional Justice (Ashgate).
  • 2014  “Introduction” (with Mathias Thaler) in Mihaela Mihai and Mathias Thaler (eds.), On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies. Palgrave.