Dr. Johannes Schulz
Senior Researcher and Lecturer
T +41 41 229 55 93
johannes.schulz@unilu.ch
Frohburgstrasse 3, Raum 3.B11
CV
Johannes completed a dissertation on the normative connection between social inequality and the politics of memory in 2020, under the supervision of Prof. Rainer Forst (University of Frankfurt) and Prof. Lea Ypi (LSE). The dissertation looks at the ways in which commemorative practices and symbols, like the statues of Cecil Rhodes or Robert E. Lee, which have recently come under attack in the USA, the UK or South Africa, may reproduce social inequality. It also shows how a process of working through the past and reshaping the commemorative landscape may help overcome social inequality. He holds an MPhil in Politics: Political Theory from the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) and was a visiting student research collaborator at the University Center for Human Values in Princeton during his doctoral studies (on invitation from Prof. Philip Pettit).
He is senior researcher and lecturer at the Politics Department in Lucerne and postdoctoral researcher in a SNF project on “Peripheral Resentment” led by Prof. Joachim Blatter. He currently works on resentment as an affective state that drives grievance politics.
Research
Major Fields of Research
- Political Emotions (especially “resentment”)
- Grievance Politics
- The Politics of Memory
- Social Inequality
Projects
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Populism as Peripheral Resentment?
The peripheral resentment thesis consists of two claims: that the emotional state of resentment drives populism (1) and that this emotional state is fueled by the image of a periphery-metropole cleavage and the ways in which this image is narrated (2). In the theoretical part of the project, we aim to makeinnovative contributions to the populism debate by clarifying these two claims. Drawing on the rich literature in the philosophy of political emotions, we conceptualize resentment as an emotion between the impersonal and progressive emotion of indignation, and the personal, reactive, vindictive and regressive sentiment of ressentiment. Importantly, we also model the ways in which sliding between these emotional states (and their narrative anchors) may take place. This allows for new answers to the question of how to evaluate the phenomenon of populism, which stands at the center of the debate in politicaltheory. Second, we contribute to the spatial turn literature in the debate on populism by turning our focus from material-economic structures or fixed cultural identities to the processes of narrating periphery-metropole cleavages: in which ways, across divergent contexts, do populist agents draw on the narrative of being at the losing end of a process which sees “metropolitan elites” skim economic gains and take control in both the spheres of politics and culture? Are such images expressively connected to emotions of indignation, ressentiment or resentment and how do shifts between these distinct emotional states (and their narrative anchors) take place? 2021–2025 -
Towards transnational voting in/for Europe?!
Towards Transnational Voting in Europe?! 2017–2022
Publications
- Schulz, J. (2022). “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” revisited: Distinguishing two paradigms of working through the past. Philosophy and Social Criticism, (Online First). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537221117562
- Blatter, J., & Schulz, J. (2022). Intergovernmentalism and the Crisis of Democracy: The Case for a Horizontal Expansion of Representative Democracies. European Journal of International Relations, 1–26.
- Schulz, J. (2021). Unjust Inequality under Law. Nicolas Lipperts ZPTh-Beitrag in der Diskussion. theorieblog.de. Retrieved from https://www.theorieblog.de/index.php/2021/05/unjust-inequality-under-law-nicolas-lipperts-zpth-beitrag-in-der-diskussion/
- Schulz, J. (2019). Must Rhodes Fall? The Significance of Commemoration in the Struggle for Relations of Respect. Journal of Political Philosophy, 166–186.
- Schulz, J. (2025). Adorno in Namibia: Geschichtsphilosophische Betrachtungen zum Neuen Streit um Holocausterinnerung. In Dübgen, Franziska, Mateo Martinez, Marina & Sonderegger, Ruth (Eds.), Philosophie und Rassismus. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft.
- Schulz, J. (2024). Beherrschung und die Psychologie der Unfreiheit: Übersetzung. In Mahmoud Bassiouni, Eva Buddeberg, Mattias Iser, Anja Karnein, Martin Saar (Ed.), Die Macht der Rechtfertigung: Perspektiven einer kritischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. https://doi.org/978-3-518-30072-5
