Board of Trustee Action promoted Ines Valdez to associate professor on May 31, 2019.

Valdez, associate professor of Political Science and Director of the Latina/o Studies Program at Ohio State is a political theorist focused on the political theory of race, migration, empire, and cosmopolitanism. 

Her first book, Transnational Cosmopolitanism: Kant, Du Bois, and Justice as a Political Craft, was published in June of 2019 with Cambridge University Press. The book theorizes the notion of transnational cosmopolitanism to move the debate away from neo-Kantian accounts of cosmopolitanism toward a grounded, relational, and dialectical approach of transnational justice based on neglected portions of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work. 

Her work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, and Political Studies among other outlets. She has held or currently holds fellowships from the European University Institute, the Princeton University Center for Human Values, and the Humboldt Stiftung. 

She is currently at work on a book manuscript on imperial mobility and the origins of popular sovereignty (for a snippet of it, check out this Washington Post piece).

At Ohio State, Dr. Valdez holds courtesy appointments from Comparative Studies; Germanic Languages & Literature; History; Spanish & Portuguese; and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is affiliated with the programs on International Studies, Middle East Studies, and Latina/o Studies, which she currently directs.