About Marius |
Dr Marius S. Ostrowski BA MPhil DPhil (Oxon) FRHistS FRSA is an award-winning theorist of ideology and public opinion, and historian of 20th-century social and political thought. He has published on a wide range of topics, from socialism in the Weimar Republic to theories of expertise, and from interwar visions of European unity to contemporary forms of centrist ideology. He is a Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence.
His most recent research has focused on two cases of ideologies that competed to assert themselves in the public opinion of their day. He is nearing completion on a multi-year project (2017-20) of publishing the later writings of the German social-democratic thinker Eduard Bernstein in English for the first time. He has just embarked on a further multi-year project (2020-24) to recover the visions and proposals for a united Europe that fell by the wayside during the processes of ideological contestation that marked the historical trajectory of European integration. |
Academic career
Marius read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, with a specialist focus on political theory, history of political thought, European politics, and international relations. After graduating with First-class honours in 2010, he completed an MPhil in Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, with a thesis on realist approaches to political legitimacy, receiving a Distinction overall. In 2012, Marius was offered doctoral places at both St John’s College, University of Cambridge (with full ESRC funding) and Magdalen College, Oxford, and elected to pursue a DPhil in Politics at Oxford under the supervision of Michael Freeden. His thesis examined how people’s social occupation and class affect the way in which they form and express opinions, and he graduated with no corrections at viva in 2017.
In 2013, Marius was elected to an Examination Fellowship in Politics at All Souls College, Oxford, the only candidate out of 98 applicants to be chosen for this seven-year fully-funded research fellowship after four intensive examinations and a viva interview. During this position, he completed his doctoral studies in the social theory of public opinion, as well as his first postdoctoral project on the history of socialist and social-democratic political thought in late-Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. In this capacity, he has acted as a member of the college’s Governing Body and Postdoctoral Research Fellowship candidate selection committee, and co-examiner in Politics for Examination Fellowship examinations.
In 2013, Marius was elected to an Examination Fellowship in Politics at All Souls College, Oxford, the only candidate out of 98 applicants to be chosen for this seven-year fully-funded research fellowship after four intensive examinations and a viva interview. During this position, he completed his doctoral studies in the social theory of public opinion, as well as his first postdoctoral project on the history of socialist and social-democratic political thought in late-Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. In this capacity, he has acted as a member of the college’s Governing Body and Postdoctoral Research Fellowship candidate selection committee, and co-examiner in Politics for Examination Fellowship examinations.
Marius is also a tutor, lecturer, thesis supervisor, and examiner for graduate and undergraduate degrees in politics at the University of Oxford. He has held positions as a Lecturer in Politics at Magdalen College (2013-15, 2017-18), a Stipendiary Lecturer in Politics at Christ Church, Oxford (2014-15), and a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the New College of the Humanities, London (2015-18). He has taught political philosophy, critical theory, social theory, European politics, Marxism, and history of political thought. He has contributed substantially to curriculum reform and diversification at Oxford as a member of the DPIR committee tasked with ‘decolonising’ and improving the gender balance on the undergraduate political theory syllabus.
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In 2019, Marius spent five months as a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Florence. He conducted archival research at the Historical Archives of the European Union on pro-European movements and authors that articulated rival proposals for European unification during the interwar period and after WW2. In 2020, he returned to the EUI as a Max Weber Fellow in the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies to begin the next phase of research into the intellectual prehistory of the European Union.
Marius regularly disseminates his research in high-profile public-facing contexts. As Head of Research for the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taxation, he wrote a report on the fiscal implications of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. He has given evidence to parliamentary committees and private-sector stakeholders, and has participated in policy workshops and project collaborations with several think-tanks and MPs. He has also written regularly for print and online media outlets, including articles for the Times, New Statesman, and The Conversation. Outside his academic work, Marius is an accomplished pianist, an aspiring runner, an enthusiastic computer gamer, and a long-suffering supporter of Portsmouth F.C. He speaks English and German fluently, French and Latin proficiently, and Italian, Spanish, and pretty much anything else with unabashed enthusiasm.
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