Erik is a PhD Candidate in Political Science (subfield Political Theory) at the University of British Columbia. He received his Bachelors from The College of Wooster and his Masters from the University of Edinburgh.

Erik’s research focuses on the epistemology of democracy. He seeks to understand various epistemic worldmaking devices (including language-use, attention, and digital technologies) and their effects on democratic politics.

His dissertation, entitled Democracy and the Politics of Attention seeks to contend with the complexity of the attention economy by providing a framework for understanding the relationship between attention and democratic politics. Many in popular culture have claimed that the attention economy is leading to a crisis in democratic politics, but without understanding what attention actually entails for democracy, we cannot begin to understand when attention is in crisis, what the crisis of attention does to democratic politics, or even how to enlarge democratic agency both within and against the crisis of attention. To contend with and understand the crisis of attention spurred by the attention economy, what we need is a systematic treatment of why attention matters so deeply in contemporary democratic politics. Erik’s dissertation offers a democratic theory of attention in relation to its stakes for the future of democracy.

The W.J. Stankiewicz Memorial Prize in Political Theory, The University of British Columbia, 2022.

Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (4YF), The University of British Columbia, 2020.

The Remy Johnston Memorial Prize in Philosophy, The College of Wooster, 2018.