Rebecca Ploof

Education

Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Chicago, 2015

M.A. in Political Science, University of Chicago, 2010

B.A. in Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2008

Research interests

Environmental political theory, modern political thought, critical theory

Biography

Rebecca Ploof is Assistant Professor of Political Science. Before coming to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she held positions at Leiden University, the City College of New York, and Harvard University.

Ploof’s research brings together the history of political thought and environmental political theory. She is currently working on a book project that recovers modern theorists’ use of animal metaphors to conceptualize humans as identical and non-identical to the rest of nature. Leveraging the past for the present, the book argues that an adapted version of this self-understanding is critical to navigating politics and ecology in the Anthropocene.

Her work has received support from, among other organizations, the Dutch Research Council (NWO); the UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies; and the American Political Science Association. Her research has been published in venues such as History of Political Thought, Political Theory, and Contemporary Political Theory.