Anya Topolski

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Anya Topolski is an associate professor in ethics and political philosophy at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She obtained two bachelor degrees at McGill University in Montreal, Canada: BSc in Biochemistry (1999) and an BA Honours in Philosophy (2000). After a brief but memorable experience teaching in Korea, Anya moved to Belgium to complete a Masters in Continental Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude) specialising in the political thought of Hannah Arendt. She obtained her PhD in Philosophy at the KU Leuven, for which she was awarded the 2008 Auschwitz Foundation Stichting Prize , with a focus on the political thought of Hannah Arendt, the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and contemporary Jewish thought.

In 2009, she joined an interdisciplinary NWO project as a post-doctoral researcher to consider the application of her theory of relationality in the field of military ethics where she engaged in post-Srebrenica research on responsibility and judgment. In 2012 her research on European Identity and Exclusion, antisemitism and islamophobia, was funded by FWO – Flanders. In addition she was a lecturer at the University of Kent in Brussels in political rhetoric and communication. In 2015, she took up a position as assistant professor in political theory at Radboud University. In 2018, after being awarded an NWO and a Christine Mohrmann grant, she became an associate professor in ethics and political philosophy. These grants enabled her to establish a research group and international network. She now is principle investigator for the Race-Religion Constellation Project and coordiantor of the Race, religion, Secularism Network. For more information here is her website and a recent interview. Most recently, in 2023, she  began leading an interuniversity interdisciplinary project funded by the NWO’s advancing equity in academia through innovation grant scheme. 

Her current research is in the field of critical philosophy of race and focuses on the race-religion constellation in European in relation to dehumanization. Her areas of expertise are: racism, political philosophy, ethics, European identity and exclusion, gender, antisemitism and Islamophobia, political theology, Jewish thought, Arendt, Levinas, Judeo-Christianity. 

Publications (Selected):

Academic books; as author (IBa)

(2015). Arendt, Levinas and A Politics of Relationality. In: Assiter A., van der Zweerde E. (Eds.), bookseries: Reframing the Boundaries: Thinking the Political. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. 304 pages.

Academic books; as editor (IBe)

(2018). Ethics for Psychologists: A Global and Case-Based Approach. Editor: Anya Topolski. Sage Publishing. 

(2016). Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition? A European Perspective. (Topolski, A., Ed., Nathan, E., Ed.). De Gruyter.

Articles in internationally reviewed academic journals; as editor (ITe)

(2022) Special Issue of Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies on the Intersection of Race in Religion in African Political Communities. Co-edited with Josias Tembo.

(2020) Special Issue of the Journal Political Theology on Jean Bodin and the Sovereignty of Exclusion. Co-edited with James Renton.  Issue 6, Volume 21, 2020

(2019) Special Issue of the Journal The European Legacy on Judith Butler’s Parting Ways. Co-edited with Louis Klee. Response by Judith Butler.

Articles in internationally reviewed academic journals (IT)

(2023). The Race Religion Constellation. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Ed. John Solomos. Section: Histories/Origins, Ed. Nasar Meer. Routledge. 

(2022) Exploring the Entanglement of Race and Religion in Africa. Co-author: Josias Tembo. Special Issue of Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies on the Intersection of Race in Religion in African Political Communities. Co-edited with Josias Tembo. 

(2022) On race and religion in African political communities: an interview with David Theo Goldberg. Co-author: Nyanchama Okemwa. Special Issue of Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies on the Intersection of Race in Religion in African Political Communities. Co-edited with Josias Tembo.

(2020) The Dangerous Discourse of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ Myth: Masking the Race-Religion Constellation in Europe. Patterns of Prejudice. Genealogies of ‘Jews’ and ‘Muslims’: Social Imaginaries in the Race–Religion Nexus. A special issue guest-edited by Yolande Jansen and Nasar Meer Volume 54. Issue 1 & 2. 71-90.

(2020) Bodin Now; or, What’s Wrong With Intellectual History? In the Special Issue of the Journal Political Theology on Jean Bodin’s and the Sovereignty of Exclusion. Co-edited with James Renton.  Issue 6, Volume 21, 2020. 475-478. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2020.1806609

(2020) Nation-States, the Race-Religion Constellation, and Diasporic Political Communities: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and Paul Gilroy. Special Issue of the Journal The European Legacy Judith Butler’s Parting Ways or Ways of Cohabitation. Guest Editors: Anya Topolski & Louis Klee.  Volume 25, Issue 3. 266-281. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2020.174126

(2020) Rejecting the Rhetoric of Uniqueness: The First Step Towards Semitic Solidarity. Jewish Quarterly. Forthcoming.

(2018) The Race-Religion Intersection: A European Contribution to the Critical Philosophy of Race. Critical Philosophy of Race. Issue 6.1

(2017) Good Jew, Bad Jew: ‘Managing’ Europe’s Others. Ethnic and Racial Studies (Special issue 'Islamophobia and Surveillance: Genealogies of a Global Order'). Ed. James Renton. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2018.1391402

(2016). Tzedakah: The True Religion of Spinoza's Tractatus? History of Political Thought, 37(1), pp. 78-106.

Article in academic book (IHb)

(2023) What Do Women Have To Do With It? Race, Religion and the Witch Hunts. Purple Brains. Editor Katrine Smiet. Radboud University Press.

(2021) Race, Religion and Refugees: Arendt’s Ambiguous Analysis of Nation-States. Ed. Maria Robaszkiewicz. Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Plurality. Springer.