Sjors Verhaak

Sjors Verhaak

PhD in Political Theory  ·  Cornell University

About

Researcher specializing in environmental political theory and democratic thought.

I am a political theorist whose research examines the ecological crisis from the standpoint of political theory. I received my PhD from Cornell University in 2026. My dissertation, Imaginaries of Earth, investigates the relationship of humans to their planet through the framework of Earth imaginaries, which make sense of practices such as Earth photography, climate science and engineering, and the extension of rights to nature.

It traces the encounter between two opposing imaginaries: a dominant planetary imaginary of human exceptionalism, mastery, and stewardship, premised on the disavowal of terrestriality; and the Earth community imaginary sustained by the transnational Rights of Nature movement, which avows terrestriality through declaration. Their philosophical encounter is investigated through the problem space of Gaia.

Rather than adjudicating between these imaginaries, I attend to their meeting at sites of confluence, where confluential politics can generate more-than-human collective political subjects whose emplaced practices refigure the human-planet relation. In doing so, 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.

Recently defended Imaginaries of Earth Cornell University  ·  July 2026 Read the abstract →

For more information please visit my Cornell University profile.

Last updated: September 2026