Lawrence Hamilton

Lawrence Hamilton, (MA, MPhil, PhD Cantab MASSAf), is the SA UK bilateral research professor in political theory at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) and University of Cambridge. He is also a life member and associate of Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he has been a Mellon research fellow and visiting fellow. He is an editor of Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory. His research interests include rethinking various topics in contemporary political theory from and for the global south, as informed by real world politics and the history of political thought. He is the author or editor of eight books, including The Political Philosophy of Needs (Cambridge University Press 2003), Freedom is Power: Liberty Through Political Representation (Cambridge University Press 2014), Are South Africans Free? (Bloomsbury 2014) and Amartya Sen (Polity 2019), a 2nd edition of which was published as How to Read Amartya Sen (Penguin 2020). He is the recipient of a number of awards for research excellence including the Cambridge Gladstone Memorial Prize, the South African National Research Foundation's (NRF) Presidents Award and an NRF Blue Skies Award. He is now rated A2 by the NRF (the only political scientist to receive an A-rating in the history of the rating process).