ELSA KUGELBERG

I’m a political theorist at the University of Oxford.

I specialise in political philosophy, feminist theory, political theory of digital technology, philosophy of public policy, and philosophy of sex. My areas of competence also include ethics, philosophy of social science, and aesthetics.

I am a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. In November 2023, I received my DPhil (PhD) in Politics from the University of Oxford, for which I was supervised by Zofia Stemplowska and Jonathan Wolff. My dissertation, Just Sex, was awarded the Oxford DPIR’s 2023–24 prize for the best doctoral thesis in Political Theory. My doctoral research was generously funded by the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council. I spent the year 2025 on parental leave.

I was also trained at Stanford University’s Center for Ethics in Society, London School of Economics’s Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method (MSc Philosophy and Public Policy), and Uppsala Universitet (BSocSci Politics and Law).

I am a member of Oxford Center for the Study of Social Justice and affiliated with the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory Lab at Australian National University, and the Ethical Dating Online research network.

My research interests can be divided into three major subfields. First, I have an interest in the relationship between political theory, feminism, and intimacy. I am particularly interested in how theories of justice handle the interactions between the intimate spheres, such as the sexual domain, and the basic structure of society. In my current book project, under review at Oxford University Press, I draw on empirical research and social theory to develop a feminist theory of social justice for the sexual sphere.

The second is situated in the political theory of digital technology, and normative philosophy of computing. In this project, I explore how novel technologies and their owners exercise power over individuals and society. In particular, I am interested in the digital private spheres, and technologies of intimacy (i.e. dating apps, private messaging, AI companions). This project outlines the duties of the state, tech corporations, and users, in relation to this area of digital technology.

The third major research interest concerns contractualism as a moral and political theory. In particular, I explore the ethical and political implications of understanding what we owe to each other as dependent on our social context. One of my projects explores claims and duties under conditions of social uncertainty; how social change affects what expectations are reasonable to hold about the future, and how this impacts what we can ask of others. Another outlines the duties of policymakers in the presence of unjust social norms and in pandemics.

My research has been published in ‘American Political Science Review’, ‘Politics, Philosophy & Economics‘, ‘European Journal of Political Theory’, and ‘Journal of Medical Ethics’. You can read the abstracts here.

I am a contributing writer for Scandinavia’s largest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, where my columns, editorials, essays, and critique have regularly appeared since 2013. Before I started my DPhil, I was an editor at a publisher focused on popular philosophy and science. I have also worked as a political advisor and speechwriter in the Swedish Parliament, focusing in particular on foreign affairs, defence policy, and the European Union. Before that I was a trainee at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

My CV and academic references can be provided on request. You can contact me at elsa.kugelberg[at]politics.ox.ac.uk.