Paulina Ochoa

Paulina Ochoa is Assistant Professor of Political Science. She took her PhD from the department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University in 2006. Before joining the Department, she held a Carey Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Erasmus Institute in the University Of Notre Dame. She specializes in contemporary political theory and the history of political thought. Her main research interest is the normative theory of the state, particularly those arguments that seek to legitimize the democratic state. She has written on the concept of political theology, the concept of popular sovereignty, and on the origins of the concept of sovereignty in early modern philosophy. She is currently working on two research projects, both of which seek to answer the question of how to legitimize government democratically as the composition of the people changes. The first is a book manuscript, The Time of the People. The second is an attempt to develop a processualist political philosophy inspired by the thought of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. She is also interested in the history of ideas in Latin America, and how it relates to the history of political thought in Europe and the United States. In Spring 2008, she will teach a course on the concept of the People, and co-teach “Modern Foundations of Politics” with Ian Shapiro. In Fall 2008, she will teach courses on the concepts of Authority and Legitimacy and the concept of Sovereignty

Campus address: 115 Prospect St., Rosenkranz Hall, Room 335
Phone: 432-4690
Email: ana.ochoaespejo@yale.edu

Personal Web Page: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~apo5/