Professor Mark Olssen FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2026
- Honours
- FAcSS, FRSA
- Sections
- Education
Summary
Mark Olssen is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Higher Education Policy at the University of Surrey. His research has made important contributions to political theory, social theory, and higher education policy. His early work examined educational governance, higher education reform, and the impact of neoliberalism on education and public policy, developing influential analyses of neoliberal governmentality and its consequences for university governance, higher education systems, and the public sphere.
He is internationally recognised for his scholarship on Michel Foucault and for developing post-foundational approaches to ethics, democracy, and political normativity. His systematic reconstruction of a Foucauldian ethics is developed most fully in 'Constructing Foucault's Ethics: A Poststructuralist Moral Theory for the Twenty-First Century' (Manchester University Press, 2021).
His more recent research extends these insights into a broader account of relationality, institutional mediation, democratic governance, and the common good under conditions of complexity.
At the heart of this work lies a sustained critique of foundationalist and individualistic traditions within liberal political thought, together with the development of a non-foundational account of ethics grounded in relationality, institutions, and human flourishing. These ideas are developed in 'The Return of the Good in the Age of AI' (Edward Elgar, 2026), which advances a post-foundational conception of the good capable of addressing the ethical and political challenges posed by artificial intelligence, ecological crisis, and democratic transformation.
His forthcoming book, 'Thinkers for a Complex Age: Normative Political Theory After Foundationalism' (Routledge, forthcoming 2026), situates these ideas within a genealogical engagement with major political thinkers, developing a distinctive account of normativity after foundationalism through sustained engagement with modern and contemporary political thought.
Across this body of work, Olssen's scholarship seeks to reconnect philosophical inquiry with pressing public questions concerning democracy, education, institutions, governance, human flourishing, and the common good in an increasingly complex world.