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School of Law

Dr Matthew Bolton

Matthew

UKRI/MSCA Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Email: matthew.bolton@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Matthew joined Queen Mary in 2024 as a UKRI/MSCA Post-doctoral Research Fellow. His research fis situated at the intersection of law, conceptual history and critical theory, with a particular focus on  critical theories of antisemitism. He is interested in how the historical development of legal and state forms shapes our understanding and experience of capitalist modernity, including antiemitism in its historical and contemporary modes. His current project examines the ways in which the affinity that Jewish people may or may not have with the State of Israel is treated in anti-discrimination and equalities law. It explores how the form of anti-discrimination law, and the identity ‘characteristics’ that law constructs to protect, affects understandings of Jewish identity in contemporary society.

Prior to joining Queen Mary, he worked as a researcher on the Decoding Antisemitism project, based at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (Centre for Research on Antisemitism), Technische Universität Berlin. He previously taught Philosophy and Politics at the University of Chichester. He is currently writing a book provisionally entitled Precarious Justice: Conceptual History, Capitalism and the State Form, due to be published by Routledge in 2025. This is based on his PhD in Philosophy, which he was awarded by the University of Roehampton in 2020, and examines the relation between the historical development of the modern state form, the transition to capitalism, and the concept of justice. He is a co-editor of Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the co-author (with F. H. Pitts) of Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Emerald, 2018). He is a member of the Centre for Law, Democracy and Society at QMUL, a fellow at the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and a consultant for the Inter-Communal Professorial Group.

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