Dr Matthew Bolton

Profile

Matthew joined Queen Mary in 2024 as a UKRI/MSCA Post-doctoral Research Fellow. His research is situated at the intersection of law, social theory, conceptual history and critical theory, with a particular focus on  critical theories of antisemitism. At a broader level, his research explores how the historical development of legal and state forms shapes our understanding and experience of capitalist modernity, and in particular the formation of minority identities. More specifically, his current work focuses on the construction and limits of the legal protection of minority identities in discrimination law, and the ways such protection might come into conflict with other political and philosophical beliefs and rights of freedom of expression. His project at QMUL examines how any attachment a non-Israeli Jewish individual might have to the State of Israel is treated in UK discrimination law, particularly in light of law around freedom of expression and protected philosophical belief.

Prior to joining Queen Mary, he worked as a researcher on the Decoding Antisemitism project, based at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (Centre for Research on Antisemitism), Technische Universität Berlin. He previously taught Philosophy and Politics at the University of Chichester. He has a PhD in Philosophy, which he was awarded by the University of Roehampton in 2020, and which examined the relation between the historical development of the modern state form, the transition to capitalism, and the concept of justice. He is a co-editor of Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the co-author (with F. H. Pitts) of Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Emerald, 2018). He is a member of the Centre for Law, Democracy and Society at Queen Mary, and a consultant for the Inter-Communal Professorial Group.

Research

Funded research

UKRI/MSCA Post-doctoral research project: How should a connection between Jewish identity and affinity with Israel be treated by anti-discrimination law?

Surveys show that more than 90% of British Jews feel the State of Israel plays a significant role in their Jewish identity. This project, funded by UK Research and Innovation via the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship programme, explores how this connection is treated in UK anti-discrimination law. It responds to a number of legal judgments regarding claims of Israel-related anti-Jewish discrimination which have come to radically opposed conclusions, and which have led to confusion about the protection Jewish people can expect from equality law. Combining qualitative doctrinal legal research and socio-legal and political philosophy methodologies, the project will seek to bring clarity to this issue by: 

• showing how distinct, and at times incommensurable, conceptions of Jewish affinity with Israel are active in this dispute;
• examining whether the formal structure of anti-discrimination law, based on a set of “protected characteristics”, limits its understanding of Jewish affinity with Israel;
• exploring the historical origins and contemporary significance of what the project terms an “existential” relation between the Jewish identity of many – though not all – Jews today and Israel;
• considering how rights to free expression and protected philosophical beliefs can be protected while also combating anti-Jewish discrimination and harassment.

Works in progress

• ‘Jewish identity, Zionism and the protected characteristics model of discrimination law’ – journal article under peer review at the International Journal of Law and Discrimination.
• ‘Theorising antisemitism through law: the legal basis of eternalist, historicist and post-secularist approaches to antisemitism’ – article in progress.

Publications

• 2026: ‘Anti-Zionism as ‘philosophical belief’: the case of David Miller,’ Industrial Law Journal v55, Issue 1, March 2026, 213–246.
• 2026: ‘What Keir Starmer got wrong about Zionism and antisemitism,’ The Conversation, 19 May.
• 2025: ‘The meaning of ‘genocide,’ The Conversation, 18–19 May 2026 meaning of ‘genocide’,’ K.The Conversation La Revue, June.
• 2025: ‘Does antisemitism even exist? The historians’ row following October 7,’ K. La Revue, January.
• 2024: ‘Three Theories of Separation: Kelsen, Schmitt and Pashukanis and the historical development of the legal form,’ Philosophy & Social Criticism v50, Issue 10, 1563–1588.
• 2024: ‘Disenchanting Palestine: Moralism and Hyperpolitics in the Aftermath of October 7,’ in: Rosa Freedman and David Hirsh (eds.) Responses to 7 October: Antisemitic Discourse, Routledge: 44-52.
• 2024: ‘Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition. Edited by David Feldman and Marc Volovici. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 294 pp. £109.99’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, vol 7, 1: 105-111.
• 2024: Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online (Palgrave Macmillan) ed., with Matthias J. Becker, Hagen Troschke, Alexis Chapelan.
• 2024: ‘“More like Genocide”: The use of the concept of genocide in online discourse on Israel and Palestine,’ in: Matthias J. Becker et al (eds.), Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century, Open Book Publishers: 107-135.
• 2024:  ‘Images of Zionism in the Age of the Internet,’ in: Colin Shindler (ed.), The Routledge Handbook on Zionism, Routledge: 520-537, with Matthias J. Becker.
• 2023: ‘Enabling Concepts In Hate Speech: The Case of the Apartheid Analogy,’ in: Isabel Ermida (ed.), Hate Speech in Social Media Palgrave Macmillan: 253-286, with Matthias J. Becker, Laura Ascone and Karolina Placzynta.
• 2023: ‘Antisemitism in the British New Liberalism movement,’ in Marcel Stoetzler (ed.) Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitim, Bloomsbury: 51-73.
• 2023: 'Labour, Antisemitism and the Critique of Political Economy' in Marcel Stoetzler (ed.), Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitism, Bloomsbury: 253-273, with F.H.Pitts.
• 2023: ‘Climate Catastrophe, The ‘Zionist Entity’ and ‘The German Guy’: An Anatomy of the Malm-Jappe Dispute,’ in David Hirsh (ed.), The Rebirth of Antisemitism in the 21^st Century, Routledge: 224-245.
• 2023: ‘What Corbyn’s favourite sociologists get wrong about antisemitism,’ in Alan Johnson (ed.), Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays, Routledge: 79-84.
• 2022: ‘The Decoding Antisemitism Project – Reflections, Methods and Goals,’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism vol 5, 1 (March 2022), with Matthias J. Becker.
• 2020: ‘Conceptual Vandalism, Historical Distortion: The Labour Antisemitism crisis and the limits of class instrumentalism,’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, vol 3, 2 (September 2020) 11-30.
• 2020: ‘Democratic Socialism’ and the Concept of (Post)-Capitalism,’ Political Quarterly, vol 91, 2 (April-June 2020) 334-342.
• 2020: ‘The Rigged System: Corbynism, Truncated Critique and Conspiracy Theory,’ in A. Aletti and D. Padovan (eds), Clockwork Enemy: Xenophobia and Racism in the Era of Neo-populism, Mimesis International: 187-220, with F.H. Pitts.
• 2019: ‘Liberalism and Critical Marxism,’ British Politics, 15 (2020), 120-133, with F.H. Pitts (online first)
• 2018: Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Bingley: Emerald, 2018), with F.H. Pitts.
• 2018: ‘Corbynism and Blue Labour: post‑liberalism and national populism in the British Labour Party,’ British Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century Politics, vol 15 (2020), 88–109,with F.H. Pitts.