We are pleased to award the BIAPT Mid-Career Prize to Dr Jemima Repo, who is a Reader in Political and Feminist Theory at Newcastle University and an outstanding citizen of the international community of researchers in political theory. Driven by a commitment to making political theory speak critically yet productively to some of the most pressing debates and issues of contemporary politics, Repo has made numerous original theoretical contributions to gender theory, biopolitics and feminism.
Her book The Biopolitics of Gender (OUP, 2015) disrupted conventional perceptions of ‘gender’ as inherently liberatory, offering an insightful retelling of its history, challenging widespread assumptions about its transformative potential. Theorising gender as an historically specific biopolitical apparatus, she drew on extensive archival research to trace the emergence of ‘gender’ in 1950s psychiatry, its feminist appropriations in the 1970s, all the way to its institutionalisation in 1990s social policy. The book was awarded the prestigious 2017 International Studies Association’s Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Award and has become a key theoretical text in multiple disciplines.
Her current research focuses on two projects. On the one hand, Repo works at the intersection of social reproduction theory, biopolitics and settler colonial studies, offering a new framework for understanding how struggles over labour and land are fundamentally entwined through life-making processes under settler colonial rule – with a focus on Palestine. On the other, she is interrogating the gendered logics of ‘Chicago School’ economics and economic arguments for gender equality. The findings of this latter project were published in the journal International Political Sociology, and awarded the 2021 American Political Science Association Okin-Young Award in Feminist Political Theory, in recognition of Repo’s conceptual innovation: Repo proposed ‘feminist commodity activism’ to theorise the entanglement of feminist protest and consumer capitalism.
Pedagogically, Repo has demonstrated a commitment to enhancing students’ interest in political theory and nurturing their intellectual capacities. Her courses have attracted massive student interest, and have been consistently oversubscribed. She also has vast experience in supervising graduate students, whose projects tackle important political challenges with the tools of feminist, gender and decolonial theory.
As a member of the profession, Repo’s contributions have been exemplary. Her editorial work for one of the key international journals in political theory (Contemporary Political Theory), as well as her involvement with international professional organisations (both as a conference convener and section chair for large entities) and prominent prize juries, are truly exceptional for a mid-career scholar. In all these capacities, she has shown excellent leadership and dedication, epitomising the virtues of a good academic citizen. Her academic outreach activities – dealing with issues such as women’s rights, reproduction, political violence, the rise of the Far Right – complete the profile or a highly original and publicly engaged thinker.
Upon receipt of this award, Dr Repo said: “It means a great deal to receive this award from BIAPT. I am grateful to the judges, and to the many colleagues whose generosity, encouragement, and collaboration have made my career not only possible, but also worthwhile.”