Dr. Albena Azmanova

Dr. Albena Azmanova is a writer, scholar, and political commentator whose analyses focus on social and political justice, the rise of new ideologies, and the troubled relationship between democracy and capitalism. She is currently Professor of Political and Social Science at City St George’s, University of London, Senior Fellow at the OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative, Bard College, Honorary Fellow at the Institute for Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick, and a member of the expert group to the European Parliament’s Independent Commission for Sustainable Equality. She is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis, and co-director of the Radical Critical Theory Circle. She is a frequent keynote speaker at major European forums on democracy, sustainability, and civil society. She is the author, most recently, of Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia (Columbia University Press, 2025; translations: Paris: Seuil, 2023; Vienna: Konturen, 2021; Bucharest: Inst. Cercetari, 2022; Rome: Castelvecchi, 2025).

Her work on the ways in which ubiquitous precarity is fostering the rise of autocratic populism has received multiple awards, including the Michael Harrington Book Award from the American Political Science Association (2021) and the Best Book Prize for International Political Economy from the International Studies Association (2022).