A young man with red hair, blue eyes, and a broad smile, wearing a dark blazer over a light collared shirt, against a blue background.

Matthew benjamin
cole, PHD

I’m a Research Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Source Project at Binghamton University. My interdisciplinary teaching in political science, philosophy, and environmental studies reflects a wide-ranging research agenda in political theory.

political theory in the future tense

As a political theorist, I’m drawn to questions about the future - how we imagine it and who has the power to shape it.

My work examines thought and action in times of crisis, from the twentieth-century traumas of totalitarianism and nuclear war to the political, technological, and ecological crises that will define our century.

My first book, Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century, is available now from the University of Michigan Press in paperback, hardcover, and open access e-book formats.