Didier Zuniga
Pronouns: he/him
Personal Website: https://didierzuniga.com
Contact
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts - Political Science Dept
- didier@ualberta.ca
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
Nature Feminist theories New materialisms & posthumanism Decolonial & Anticolonial political thought Aztec (Mexica) and Nahua thought Mesoamerican thought
About
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. I was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre de Recherche en Éthique in Montreal (2022-2023), and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University (2020-2022). I received my PhD in Political Theory from the University of Victoria, British Columbia (2020). I was born and raised in Mexico City.
Research
My research and teaching program is organized around the theme of ‘politics beyond the human’. Broadly conceived, my work seeks to expand the realm of the political beyond both anthropocentrism and humanism. It does so by learning from and engaging with alternative ways of relating to the multiplicity of beings, ecosystems, and interconnected webs of life on Earth. My main goal is to extend ethics and politics beyond dominant understandings of ‘the human’, and thus to deparochialize and to ecologize political thought.
More specifically, my current research agenda centers on Aztec (Mexica), Nahua, and, more broadly, Mesoamerican thought. This research seeks to articulate Aztec thought as a generative contribution to foundational questions about nature, reality, existence, causality, time, space, identity, personhood, and the relation between mind and body. It aims to render the Aztec cosmovision legible to a political theory audience and, in doing so, to demonstrate its potential for rethinking ethical and political questions about how to live well in and with the world. In this sense, the project contributes to decolonization by amplifying the vitality of Aztec ideas and enabling them to circulate, be engaged with, and have impact within political theory in ways comparable to those afforded to Euro-Western traditions.
Please visit my website for a list of publications.
Teaching
I am interested in supervising honours and graduate students in political theory, particularly those with a passion for exploring environmental and ecological political thought, as well as ethics and politics beyond 'the human'. I welcome students who draw on critical approaches, especially feminist theories, decolonial, postcolonial, and anti-colonial thought, comparative political theory, disability studies, and critical animal studies.
Courses
POL S 298 - Topics in Political Science
A variable content course, which may be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: POL S 101 or Department consent.
POL S 302 - Topics in Political Theory
A variable content course, which may be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: One of POL S 211, 212 (or 210) or Department consent.
POL S 305 - Contemporary Political Theory
Focuses on struggles over citizenship, the self, and social justice through the work of theorists like Arendt, Beauvoir, Freud, Fanon, Foucault, Rawls, and Tully. Prerequisite: POL S 210 or 211 or 212 or consent of Department.
POL S 410 - Topics in Contemporary Political Theory
A critical examination of contemporary trends in political philosophy. A variable content course, which may be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: One of POL S 211, 212 (or 210) or Department consent.
POL S 514 - Contemporary Political Theory
Featured Publications
Didier Zúñiga
European Journal of Political Theory. 2025 April; 10.1177/14748851231214252
Theory & Event. 2025 January; 28 (1):120-144 10.1353/tae.2025.a947376
Didier Zúñiga
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. 2023 June; 10.1080/13698230.2020.1772605
University of Toronto Press. 2023 January;
Contemporary Political Theory. 2022 June; 21 (2): 198 - 218 10.1057/s41296-021-00514-9
Constellations. 2021 January; 10.1111/1467-8675.12499
Didier Zúñiga
Hypatia. 2020 April; 10.1017/hyp.2020.7
View additional publications