Dorothea Gädeke - EDP Network

Dorothea Gädeke

EDP Network Member

Dorothea has been Professor of Political Theory and Legal Theory at the Otto Suhr Institute at the Free University of Berlin since August 2024.

Her research focuses on the intersection of theories of power, structural injustice and democracy. She is particularly interested in combining analytical normative philosophy with continental traditions of thought and non–Western philosophy. At the center are theories of domination and the development of critical republicanism that combines neo-republicanism with the Kantian tradition of republican thought and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

Her particular focus is on the analysis of power and domination in global North-South relations. Her engagement with African philosophy reflects her interest in structural injustices by addressing relations of domination within the academic world itself. Dorothea addressed the topic of democracy promotion in particular in her book “Politics of Domination. A Critical Theory of External Democracy Promotion“ (Suhrkamp, 2017). In it, she develops core elements of a critical republicanism to show that democracy promotion and the postcolonial imperialism accusation against it share the same normative concern. Both, she argues, pursue the goal of non-domination, yet both have ultimately fallen back into a politics of domination.

While working at the Ethics Institute of the University of Utrecht, Dorothea co–led a sub–project on digital technologies and democracy in the Global South within the NWO Gravitation
Consortium Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies. Currently, Dorothea is mainly working on a research project on theories of freedom from below, which is also funded by the NWO. In addition, she is Principal Investigator at the Cluster of Excellence Contestations of the Liberal Script.

More about Dorothea Gädeke here.

Contact: dorothea.gaedeke [at] external-democracy-promotion.eu