Madalyn Hay
I am a PhD Candidate in Political Theory in the Political Science Department at the University of Toronto.
My research interrogates political actors use of legal concepts to contest political authority and enact new social and political forms. I approach this interest in the history of political thought and contemporary political practice through a combination of theoretical, qualitative, historical, and archival methods.
About Madalyn Hay
My current book project based on my dissertation interrogates the political uses of the legal trust. I trace its use through history, from the English Civil War and the Levellers, into the present day practices of Community Land Trusts. I argue that the trust has been a political/legal metaphor like the more familiar metaphors of the contract and corporation, but that political actors have mobilized the ethical obligations and proprietary claims of trusteeship to both frame demands for accountable governance and assert forms of political autonomy.
Along side my book project, my contemporary research uses ethnographic and qualitative methods to investigate the democratic governance practices of Community Land Trusts and Cooperative housing. My research has contributions to offer to central problems in democratic theory, prefigurative politics, and sociolegal thought.
My work has previously appeared in Contemporary Political Theory.
I am currently a doctoral fellow at the Center for Ethics at the University of Toronto. My research has been previously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship.
Before coming to Toronto, I received an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and a B.A.H in Contemporary Studies and Classics from the University of King’s College.