Niklas Plaetzer

Niklas Plaetzer obtained a PhD in political science at Sciences Po Paris in December 2025, and he is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, with an expected defense in June 2026.  His research interests include democratic theory, constitutionalism, critical theory, and the politics of social movements. In his dissertation, Niklas is developing a democratic theory of the “insurgent institution” which emphasizes the dialectics between popular protest and the language of rights beyond the traditional framework of state sovereignty, drawing on the thought of Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort, and Édouard Glissant, among others. His latest publications underline the role of the historical narrative that underlies normative theory particularly with respect to postcolonial thought and ongoing debate in comparative political theory.

He was a Doctoral Fellow at the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights in 2024-2025, and an Exchange Fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (spring 2024) and at the University of Bologna (summer 2025). He has previously taught classes at the University of Chicago, Sciences Po Paris, the Université Paris-Est Créteil, and Humboldt University in Berlin where He was affiliated with the Centre Marc Bloch between 2020 and 2022. He is Graduate Associate of the Association for Global Political Thought (AGPT) at Harvard University and Associate Researcher (chercheur associé) at the Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) in Paris.