Sjors Verhaak

Sjors Verhaak

PhD Candidate in Political Theory  ·  Cornell University

About

Doctoral candidate at Cornell University specializing in democratic thought and environmental political theory.

I am a doctoral candidate in political thought whose research examines the ecological crisis from the standpoint of political theory. More specifically, my dissertation, Imaginaries of Earth (defense: July 2026), investigates the role of Earth—in its narrative, metaphoric, and imaginative dimensions—not only in environmental politics, but in planetary politics writ large.

It does so through a series of interrelated investigations: the emergence of the metaphor of Spaceship Earth in the 1960s and its diffusion into the planetary imaginary; the theoretical underpinnings of the Rights of Nature movement, with an emphasis on the Earth community as an ontological community of being; and the discursive figure of Gaia in the environmental humanities and Gaia theory.

In weaving these strands together, guided by a structuring focus on the conceptual role of Earth, I aim to cultivate a distinctive multi-species and post-anthropocentric approach to contemporary democratic theorizing, while reorienting political theory to the imaginaries that both sustain—and are sustained by—politics. My next project, Democracy at Earth's Edge, extends this research by examining how Earth imaginaries are negotiated between global frameworks of climate governance and local democratic practices.

For more information please visit my Cornell University profile.