Lecturer I, Program in International and Comparative Studies
About
David Zeglen’s research is broadly concerned with cultural theory in International Relations and Global Political Economy. His work explores the social construction of time, space, and identity as sites of domination and resistance in the international realm from a historical materialist perspective.
Dr. Zeglen is currently working on two projects. His first project concerns how different modes of production involve specific ideologies of time that structure how societies interact with each other. Focusing on the bourgeois revolutions in Western Europe from the 17th to 19th centuries, he argues that the dominant understanding of capitalist time is informed by the temporal ideology of development as it is mediated through different nationalist discourses.
Dr. Zeglen’s second project concerns the collective action problem towards the global climate crisis. Focusing on the political possibilities and limits of the temporality of utopia, he asks what value utopian thinking has for political mobilization in the face of catastrophic climate change.
Prior to his academic career, Zeglen worked for various national and international non-profit organizations and NGOs, including the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Project Hope Palestine, the Caravan Stage Company, the Independent Media Arts Alliance, AIDS Community Care Montreal, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, and the Canadian Improv Games.
