Dr Filipe Carreira Da Silva

Selwyn College crest
Selwyn College
  • Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon
Available to supervise doctoral students
Available to supervise masters students
Dr Filipe Carreira Da Silva

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About

Dr Filipe Carreira da Silva is a Fellow of Selwyn College (since 2014) & Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (since 2024).

He was born in 1975 and educated in Sociology (PhD) at St. Edmund's College Cambridge. He has held visiting positions at Harvard, Chicago, Yale, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2010, his book Mead and Modernity was awarded the American Sociological Association Distinguished Book Award (History of Sociology). His latest work includes Colonial Senses. Colonial Sensorial Regimes and the Anti-Colonial Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Democratic Resentment. A Global History of Populism from the American Populists to the Present Day (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Research

Research interests

  • Politics and Inequality
  • Theory and Culture

Filipe Carreira da Silva’s research began in the late 1990s with a series of conceptual reconstructions, namely: of a concept (Habermas’ concept of public sphere), of a political tradition (civic republicanism in late nineteenth-century America), and finally that of an individual author, G.H. Mead. His research on Mead, in particular, has led him to further explore the implications of the tension between theory building and intellectual history in sociology. This historical work on American philosophical pragmatism has provided him with the background for his current research on the materiality of ideas, namely his proposal for a pragmatic genealogy of key sociological classics.  

Grants and Projects

  • 2022-2025: Co-PI, “Race Trouble. Decolonizing race andracial inequality in postcolonial Portugal” (2022.04225.PTDC) exploratory research project, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology,Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education. PI: Sofia Aboim. Funding awarded: €49.981,65.
  • Carreira Da Silva, F. (PI) Rethinking Populism. Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education - Foundation for Science and Technology (2018-2020): €208,000
  • “What do we do when we do nothing? A history of laziness”. Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme 2015/16. 
  • “A History of Sociology in Six Books”. British Academy-Leverhulme Small Research Grant and Newton Trust Small Research Grant.
  • “Broken Promises. The Political Origins of Socioeconomic Inequality in Portugal, 1960-2010”. Foundation for Science and Technology, Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education.
  • “Social Rights in Portugal: Their Constitutionalization and Socio-economic Implications” (PTDC/CPO/71295/2006), funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education.
  • “Cities and Citizenship in Portugal” (PDCT/CPO/60414/2004), funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education.

 

Publications

Books

  • Silva, F.C. 2025. Democratic Resentment. A Global History of Populism from the American Populists to the Present Day. Oxford: Oxford University Press. With Mónica Brito Vieira.
  • Silva, F.C. 2018. The Politics of the Book. Penn State University Press. With Mónica Brito Vieira.
  • Silva, F. C., 2015. Sociology in Portugal. A Short History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • Silva, F. C., 2011. G.H. Mead. A Reader. London: Routledge (Classics in Sociology Series). (edited) Now in Paperback - December 2012.
  • Silva, F. C., 2010. Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press. With Patrick Baert. (Translations into Italian: 2010. Teoria Sociale Contemporanea. Bologna: Societá Editrice Il Mulino; Spanish: 2011. La Teoría Social Contemporánea. Madrid: Alianza Editorial; Portuguese: 2012. Teoria Social Hoje. Lisboa: Mundos Sociais: Polish: 2013. Krakow: Zaklad Wadawniczy Nomos) .
  • Silva, F. C., 2008. Mead and Modernity. Science, Selfhood, and Democratic Politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 
  • Silva, F.C., 2007. G.H. Mead. A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. 

Book Chapters

  • Silva, F.C. & Vieira, M.B. 2020. Populism: The Concept and the Polemic. In Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory. Gerard Delanty and Stephen P. Turner (eds.). London: Taylor and Francis.
  • Silva, F. C. & Viera, M. B. 2019. Habermas in Portugal. In: Habermas Global. The Reception of his Work/Habermas global - Wirkungsgeschichte eines Werks. Luca Corchia, Stefan Müller-Doohm, William Outhwaite (eds.) Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.
  • Silva, F. C. 2019. Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805-1859). In: Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd edition. George Ritzer (ed.). New York: Wiley.
  • Silva, F. C. 2016. G.H. Mead. In Key Sociological Thinkers, 3rd ed. Rob Stones (ed). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Silva, F. C. & Baert, P. 2014. Evolution, Agency and Objects: Re-discovering Classical Pragmatism. In Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory. A. Gardner, M. Lake, & U. Sommer (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Journal Articles

Teaching and supervision

Available to supervise doctoral students
Available to supervise masters students
  • SOC6: Advanced Social Theory - "Rethinking Populism" module.
    SOC2: Social Theory

Graduate supervision

Filipe is available to supervise PhD and MPhil students interested in working on contemporary social theory, history of sociology, and pragmatism.

Supervised Theses

  • Pedro Pereira Neto, “Ambientalismo e Comunicação Política” (2012)
  • António Baptista, “Isocracy – A Theory of Democracy” (2013)
  • Pedro Miguel Martins Mendonça, “Democracy, Populism, and Economic Globalization — An extension of the selectorate theory” (2018)
  • Julius Maximilian Rogenhofer, “Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder. Rethinking Germany’s response to irregular migration” (2021)
  • Daniel Davison-Vecchione, “On the Genealogy of Action: Conceptions of the Self in Max Weber and Georg Simmel” (2022)
  • Joe P.L. Davidson, “Jumpstart: Utopia in the Aftermath of Progress” (2022)
  • Maria João Taborda. “Valores e Cinema” (2022)
  • Abdullah Awad, “Adorno, Aesthetics, and Critical Theory Beyond Europe.” (2022)
  • Sebastian Raza-Mejia, “Agents in Crisis: Theoretical Studies on Agency, Meaning and Time” (2023)
  • Iris Pissaride, "Cyprus in the British Empire’s Time and Space: Documents, Objects, and Colonial Practices of Knowledge Production." (2023)