Ruth is a political theorist and historian of ideas with interests in historical and contemporary anarchism, nineteenth and early twentieth-century socialist thought, utopianism and political militancy.
Ruth graduated from Queen Mary, University of London with a 1st class degree in History and Politics. She completed her doctoral research at Nuffield College, Oxford.
She is co-founder of Loughborough’s Anarchism Research Group and co-founder and co-convenor (2005-2018) of the (a specialist group of the Political Studies Association) and with Matthew S. Adams, co-editor of the peer review journal .
A long-standing member of UCU and former Department’s rep., she is a member of the Loughborough Branch UCU’s campaigns and workload teams.
Awards:
2024-25 , ‘Rose Pesotta: Transnational Mobilising in the USA 1921-1927’
2023-24
2020 Shortlisted for 2020 for the
2017 Santander Mobility Award
2016 Higher Education Innovation Funding
2016
2015 ISRF ‘
2003-04 , ‘Early Writings on Terrorism’
1993 British Academy ‘Mutual Aid in Historical Context’
1983-86 SSRC studentship
1982 Drapers’ Prize, Queen Mary University of London
Media:
Radio: BBC Radio 4 , ,
BBC Radio 3 , BBC Parliament, BOOKtalk
Festivals: How the Light Gets In and , Idler 2023.
Print: , , , and .
Online: , , , ,
Academic publishing:
Ruth’s first monograph was published in 2000 with University of Wales Press. In 2016, she published with University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book, co co-authored with Alex Prichard (Exeter), provisionally titled, Constitutionalising Anarchy: Individual Sovereignty, Association, Non-Domination, is forthcoming in the .
Ruth is editor of the Continuum/Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism (2012/14) and co-editor of Anarchism and Utopianism (Manchester University Press, 2009 with Laurence Davis), Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red (Palgrave & PM Press, 2012/2017 with Alex Prichard, Saku Pinta and David Berry), Anarchism 1914-18: Internationalism, Anti-militarism and War (Manchester University Press, 2017 with Matthew S. Adams), Handbook of Radical Politics (Routledge, 2019 with Uri Gordon) and Cultures of Violence (Routledge, 2020 with Gillian Whiteley).
Public scholarship:
Ruth is the author of two introductions to anarchism - (Oneworld, 2005/2009) and (Pelican, 2019) – and the pamphlet series (Dog Section Press, 2020). She is co-author with , and of , a guide to anarchist constitutionalising. Her fruitful collaboration with Alex Prichard on the generated REF2021 Impact Case Studies at and .
She participated in the convivial cross-disciplinary Politicized Practice Research Group and, collaborating with Loughborough colleagues Gillian Whiteley and Fred Dalmasso, helped facilitate the and the linked exhibitions at and the , at the 2019 Venice Biennial.
She is editor of the forthcoming .
Internal management:
- 2015 Academic partner in the Consent initiative, with Loughborough Students Union Women’s Network
- 2011-17 Member, Validation Committee British University in Egypt
- 2011-14 Associate Dean for Teaching, School of Social, Political and Geographical Science.
- 2010-11 Associate Dean for Teaching, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
- 2005 University teaching prize
Public engagement:
- 2024 How to be an anarchist, a short course for the .
- 2021
- 2020 The anarchy night school – hosted by Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham
- 2019 Massolit lectures on anarchism for A level politics
- 2015/2019 Co-author with Uri Gordon of the Political Studies Association Teachers’ Topic Guide on Anarchism and Ideology.
Ruth was the School’s inaugural Director of Postgraduate Programmes and has supervised 16 doctoral researchers. She has been appointed external examiner for 17 PhD theses in the UK and internationally.
She is co-supervising three doctoral researchers:
- Isobel van Hagen, “Practical Anarchist Approaches to Gendered Violence in the ‘Alegal’ Space”
- William Godfrey: “Towards a materialist animal liberation”
- Sam Garrett: “Political subjectivity and identity politics in contemporary radical organisation’
Ruth sits on PhD committees at the California Institute of Integral Studies, University of Helsinki, and University Paul Valéry, Monpellier 3. She has been a member of supervision committees at the University of Guelph and Federal University of Santa Catarina.
The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism
Publisher: Pelican
By: Ruth Kinna
Published in August 2019.
Anarchic Agreements
Publisher: PM Press
By: Ruth Kinna, Alex Pritchard, Thomas Swann and Seeds for Change
- ‘Anarchism and Communalism: The Defeat of the Commune and the Rise of Communal Anarchism’, in van der Zweerde, Kets and van de Sande (eds.) Communalism as a Democratic Repertoire: From the Paris Commune to the Present (Routledge, 2025).
- Kropotkin and the Anarchist Case for Penal Abolition’ in David Scott (ed.) , (Bristol University Press, 2025).
- Simon Stevens and Ruth Kinna, R. ‘. Contemporary Political Theory, online first, 2024.
- José Gutierrez and Ruth Kinna, ‘’ Introduction to the Themed Section in Nations and Nationalism, 29 (1), 2023: 121-130
- ‘Emma Goldman’ in Manjeet Ramgotra and Simon Choat (eds) (Oxford University Press, 2023)
- Ruth Kinna, Alex Prichard, Thomas Swann and Seeds for Change (co-ed) , (PM Press, 2022)
- ‘’, in Marcel van der Linden (ed.) Cambridge History of Socialism, (Cambridge University Press, 2022) 331-354
- ‘?’ Nations and Nationalism, 27 (4) (2021): 976-991