About Marius

Dr Marius S. Ostrowski BA MPhil DPhil (Oxon) FRHistS FRSA

I am a German-British political and social theorist, historian of ideas, policy thought-leader and consultant, and classical musician. My work covers a wide range of themes, from ideology and geostrategy to social democracy, European integration, and education and skills policy. Since October 2024, I am a Policy Fellow and Researcher at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). I am also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Political Ideologies, and an Honorary Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research into Ideas and the Study of Political Ideologies, University of Nottingham.

I was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1988 to a German–Romanian mother from Sighisoara (Schässburg) and a Polish father from Poznan. After moving to the UK in 1994, I attended school at Nower Lodge, Colet Court, and Eton College. I read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, specialising in political theory, history of political thought, European politics, and international relations. After graduating with First-class honours in 2010, I 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.

​In 2012, I was offered doctoral places at both St John’s College, 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. My thesis Twilight of the pollsters: A social theory of mass opinion in late modernity examined how our social occupations affect the way we form and express opinions, and I graduated with no corrections at viva in 2017.

Since completing my doctoral studies, my research has focused on the social theory and history of ideas and ideologies. In 2013, I was elected to an Examination Fellowship in Politics at All Souls College, Oxford, where I embarked on postdoctoral research on the history of social-democratic thought in late-Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. In 2020, I took up a Max Weber Fellowship at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute. Fuelled by primary research in the Historical Archives of the European Union, I developed a new project on the intellectual prehistory of the European Union during the interwar period and after WW2.

Parallel to this research lies a close and growing engagement with UK and EU policymaking. In 2022, I joined the thinktank ResPublica, first as Senior Public Policy Researcher, and then as Executive Director of the Lifelong Education Institute to oversee its incubation as an independent voice in learning and skills policy space. I also joined the ‘Next Left’ network of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, and in 2024 became convenor of its Progressive Historians Network, investigating how the history of the progressive left can inform new directions for future European geostrategy.

This dual expertise bridging academic and policy-oriented thinking has allowed me to craft a unique perspective on the challenges facing society today. I have written books including Left Unity (2020), Ideology (2022), and A Radical Bargain for Europe (2024), along with over 20 reports and articles. My work has been recognised through Fellowships of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts, and in 2023 I was named an inaugural member of the Chamber of Legal Sciences of the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy in Poland.

​Outside my academic work, I am an accomplished pianist, an aspiring runner, an enthusiastic computer gamer, and a long-suffering supporter of Portsmouth FC. I speak English and German fluently, French and Italian proficiently, and pretty much anything else with unabashed enthusiasm.