Mary Jo Mac Donald
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Mount Allison University and an associate member of the SCR at Oriel College, Oxford. Before joining Mount Allison, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä. I received my PhD from the University of Toronto in 2024.
My work centers on early modern women’s political writings and uses them to generate new insights for contemporary debates in political theory. My writing on these topics has appeared, or is forthcoming, in American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Political Theory, Polity, Hobbes Studies, and Politics & Gender. I am also co-founder of the research network Women in History of Political Thought.
I am currently working on three research projects, all of which explore early modern feminist thought. The first project, Dangerous Equals, asks what debates about women's monstrosity can teach us about the nature of equality. The second project, Marriage as Slavery, uncovers the relationship between early English feminism and the transatlantic slave trade. The third project, a collaboration with Dr. Geertje Bol, looks at the tradition of Tory feminism, investigating how English feminists shaped the trajectory of conservative thought (and vice versa).
