I am a normative political theorist in the analytical tradition with interests in political resistance, human rights, social justice and migration.
I am particularly interested in the ethical issues that arise when politics is conducted outside formal institutions. This interest unites a number of diverse topics I have published on, ranging from civil disobedience to online public shaming to ethical issues around suicide in the context of injustice.
My work to date has reconceptualised human rights as a dynamic tool for challenging power, proposed novel ethical justifications for political resistance and critiqued immigration enforcement.
I am currently Principal Investigator for ‘The Right to Liveability: An Ethical Assessment’ a three-year project from 2026 to 2029 funded by the Leverhulme Trust (£222,648). This project investigates the issues of social and democratic justice raised by the unequal distribution of mental distress and suicide between social groups. It considers arguments for a ‘right to liveability’ - a moral right to be protected from social conditions that elevate mental distress and suicide – and explains how this can shape policy-making.
Prior to this, I was PI for Starving for Dignity: Re-framing the Ethics of Hunger Strikes, a two-year project funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme (£10,000) that used grounded political theory to examine the moral issues surrounding hunger strikes, self-immolation and other forms of ‘sacrificial resistance’. You can find out more about the project here.
I have also written on online public shaming and various other issues in applied ethics.
A list of my publications can be found below as well as on Google Scholar, Academia.edu and my Loughborough research repository page. If you are looking to find a paper you don't have access to, drop me an email and I will be happy to share a pdf.
PUBLICATIONS
Aitchison, Guy, 'When suicide is unjust violence: power, structural harms and moral culpability, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 86, No. 3, (2024).
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/729936
Essex, R, Dillard-Wright, J, Aitchison, G, Aked, H., 'Everyday resistance in the UK’s National Health Service', Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Vol. 20 (2023).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11673-023-10274-3
Aitchison, Guy, Essex, R. ‘Self-harm in immigration detention: political, not (just) medical’, Journal of Medical Ethics, Published Online First: 29 December 2022. https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/12/28/jme-2022-108366.info
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Fragility as Strength: The Ethics and Politics of Hunger Strikes’, Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 30, Issue 4, (2022): pp. 535- 558.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12261
Issa, Rita, Baker C., Spooner, R., Abrams R, Gopfert., Evans M., Aitchison, G. ‘Mapping the movement for climate change and health in England’, Perspectives in Public Health, Vol.141, Issue 6, (2021): pp. 328-337.
https://doi.org/10.1177/17579139211058303 Aitchison, Guy, ‘Border-Crossing: Immigration Law, Racism and Justified Resistance’, Political Studies, (2021): pp. 1-19.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211030184
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Beyond Lockdown? The ethics of global movement in a new era’, Ethics and Global Politics, Vol. 14, (2021): pp. 36 49.
https://doi.org/10.1080/16544951.2021.1895487
Aitchison, Guy, Meckled-Garcia, S., ‘Against Online Public Shaming: Ethical Problems with Mass Social Media’, Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 47, Issue 1, (2020): pp. 1-31. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract20201117109
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Domination and disobedience: Protest, coercion and the limits of an appeal to justice’, Perspectives on Politics, Issue 16 (3), (2018): pp. 666 679. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592718001111.
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Coercion, resistance and the radical side of non-violent action’, Raisons Politiques, Issue 1, No. 69, (2018): pp. 45-61.
https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.069.0045
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Introduction to special issue: Uncivil Disobedience’, Raisons Politiques, Issue 1, No. 69, (2018): pp. 5-12.
https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.069.0005
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Are human rights moralistic?’, Human Rights Review, Issue 1, Vol. 19, (2018): pp. 23-43.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-017-0480-4
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Foucault, democracy and the ambivalence of rights’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 22, Issue 6 (2017), pp. 770-785. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2017.1369627
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Three Models of Republican Rights: Juridical, Parliamentary and Populist’, Political Studies, Vol. 65, Issue 2, (2017): pp. 339-355.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716648339
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Rights, Citizenship and political struggle’, European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 17, Issue 1, (2015): pp. 23-43.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885115578052
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Reform, rupture or re-imagination: Understanding the purpose of an occupation’, Social Movement Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2011): pp. 431- 439. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614114
Book chapters
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Using interviews in the political philosophy of resistance’, Political Theory and Empirical Social Science, Miller and Baderin eds. (Oxford University Press) (2026).
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Risking Health as a Means of Resistance: The Case of Australia's offshore detainees’ in Essex, Issa, Smith eds. Activism, Resistance and Health, (Oxford University Press).
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Policing and Coercion - What are the Alternatives?’ in Koshka Duff ed. Abolishing the Police, Dog Section Press, (2021): pp. 133-147.
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Popular resistance and the idea of rights’, in Stuart White, Karma Nabulsi and Bruno Leipold, eds., Radical Republicanism: Reclaiming the Tradition’s Popular Heritage, Oxford University Press, (2020): pp. 103-118.
Policy report
Aitchison, Guy, The dangers ahead: COVID-19, authoritarianism and democracy, Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit, LSE (2020): pp. 1-21, (Co-authored with Luke Cooper). http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105103
Editor
Special journal issue on (Un)civil disobedience, Raisons Politiques, Issue 1, No. 69, (2018).
Book reviews
Aitchison, Guy, ‘The Right of Necessity’ by Alijandra Mancilla, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 20, Issue 5 (2017): pp. 1099-1101.Aitchison, Guy, ‘The Ethics and Politic of Immigration’ edited by Alex Sager, LSE Review of Books, (2017), https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/05/16/book-review-the-ethics-and-politics-of-immigration-core-issues-and-emerging-trends-edited-by-alex-sager
Aitchison, Guy, ‘The Political Theory of the Irish Constitution: Republicanism and the Basic Law’ by Eoin Daly and Tom Hickey, Public Law, (2017).