Richard Foster

I teach on the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and History and Politics (HP) degrees at Trinity College, providing tutorials on the first-year Introduction to the Theory of Politics course and the second-year Theory of Politics course.

I also provide seminars and support teaching on two modules for the Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree at the Blavatnik School of Government: Foundations of Political Philosophy and Applied Policy Module: Writing Effectively for a Policy Audience.

My research tries to answer how we should organise media systems in a way that is most conducive to democratic ideals. In my D.Phil. research, I consider what it is to have meaningful inclusion in the media system, the barriers which are preventing this, and some of the mechanisms and institutions which can support it. This research sits at the intersection of normative democratic theory and communication studies.

I have additional research interests in broader democratic (and particularly deliberative) theory, empirical approaches to political theory, democratisation in the workplace, democracy in urban governance, and social psychology.

With Afsoun Afsahi. Forthcoming. ‘An Experimental Approach to Deliberative Democracy and Inequality’ in The Oxford Handbook of Grounded and Engaged Normative Theory edited by Brooke Ackerly, Luis Cabrera, Genevieve Fuji Johnson, Monique Deveaux, Antje Wiener, Fonna Froman and Gina Starblanket.

Review of Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, The Making of Public Space: News, Events and Opinions in the Twenty-First Century, 2025, Oxford Political Review. Online.

Review of Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics, 2024, Oxford Political Review, Issue 13.