Taylor Kenzie Borowetz

Taylor Borowetz is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. 

She is a theorist, writing recursive analyses of the concept of liberation through the Haitian Revolution and contemporary abolitionist thought. Her scholarship aims to witness liberatory praxis and its crystallization in history. While completing her undergraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Taylor studied and lived in Japan, Denmark, and Ecuador. 

She moved to Brussels to complete two masters degrees: one from the Brussels School of International Studies (MA International Development and Human Rights Law), and one from KU Leuven (Cultural Anthropology and Development). Following this, she moved to London to start her PhD at SOAS. Taylor was President of the Political Studies Association’s Early Career Network for two years (2021-2023): responsible for over 600 members. 

Taylor aims to do politically meaningful work in different forms and forums, and doing so in solidarity with others as an opportunity to build coalition with new comrades and scholar-activists. She has published in the International Journal of Human Rights, Politics Studies Review, and E-International Relations. Taylor has also competed in the LSE Featherstone Moot, a national moot court competition, succeeding to the final round. She has organised various conferences and workshops, and is active on Twitter @TaylorBorowetz. Part-time, she teaches chess in prison (currently at HMP Thameside).

Taylor Borowetz (2023) After property? The Haitian Revolution, racial capitalism, and the foundation for a universal right to freedom from enslavement

The International Journal of Human Rights, DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2023.2283533, Taylor Borowetz, (2021). 

Commissioned Book Review: Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses, Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South.

 Political Studies Review, 19(3), NP11-NP12

Taylor Borowetz (2021) Positionality in IR: Concepts, History, and the Haitian Revolution, E-International Relations 

Taylor is interested in conceptual history and the concept of liberation, specifically within an abolitionist genealogy. In her thesis, she explores themes of translation, resonance, and the possibilities for solidarity and connection between movements, as well as complex and recursive understandings of temporality. 

She considers the Haitian Revolution to be a particularly instructive historical moment, and also reflects frequently in historiography and epistemology. In addition to her methodological contributions, Taylor’s conclusion is animated by the logic of “withering away” as it could be applied to policing and prisons as well as the state itself. Inspired by and through the Haitian Revolution and the contemporary struggle for abolition, Taylor also works on themes of social reproduction and family abolition.

Taylor Borowetz