Jacob Williams

I am currently researching the various relationships between political liberalism, religion, and conservatism in public reason for my DPhil at DPIR. My research examines how disagreements about social values, including those pertaining to contested concepts of gender, family structure, and personal relationships, should be handled in societies committed to the political liberal ideal of acknowledging reasonable pluralism about conceptions of the good among their religious and non-religious citizens. 

This involves examining the ways conservative political thought, which is often inspired by religion and involves distinctive positions on both the good and the right that are sometimes thought to be in tension with political liberalism, may (or may not) be compatible or congruent with political liberalism. It also involves engaging with the non-ideal theory of public reason and the ways extant societies can mitigate the impact of ideologies -- including unreasonable forms of comprehensive liberalism, as well as unreasonable forms of conservatism or of religious thought -- that threaten or violate the ideal.
 

Previously, I have founded and managed a private tuition business working with GCSE and A Level students in the UK, worked with parents' groups on articulating concerns about faith- sensitivity in UK school curricula, and published journalistic writing on a variety of political and social topics.

Research

My research focuses on the following main areas:

• Political liberalism, public reason, and disagreement about the good and the right
• The role of religion in politics, religiously-inspired political thought in the Christian and Islamic traditions, and the role of comprehensive conceptions of the good in political thought generally
• Conservative political thought, including Burkean and natural law traditions, their role in contemporary politics, and their compatibility (or otherwise) with political liberalism
• The non-ideal theory of public reason under conditions of cultural conflict, including its relationship to freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity, and unreasonable forms of comprehensive liberalism

Languages

I am fluent in English (native) and have an intermediate working knowledge of classical and modern standard Arabic.

Awards

During my previous study (an MA in Religion at King's College London) my work was recognised with the following awards:

• Hanson Prize for final year MA student with the highest average mark in Philosophy of Religion
• Ulrich Simon Prize for the highest average MA mark in the Department of Religious Studies