About
Patrick Whelan is a theorist and educator whose work moves between political theory, social theory, and the ethics of institutional design. He is interested in how political orders generate — or fail to generate — the conditions under which people can live as agents: capable of self-direction, oriented toward purposes they recognise as their own, and secure enough to take the long view.
His current research focuses on the structural foundations of liberal legitimacy. His doctoral project, Liberalism as Orientation, argues that procedural liberalism presupposes the capacities for agency it never theorises or guarantees, and develops an alternative framework grounded in the conditions of agency. He also writes on freedom and its structure, the political theory of dependence and capability, the ethics of AI, and the relationship between institutional design and human development.
Patrick holds an MA in Political Theory from the University of Toronto and an MA in Public Administration (Population and Development) from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He has taught across secondary and higher-education settings in Mongolia, China, Colombia, and Morocco, served in school leadership, and was an officer in the Canadian Forces. He currently works in AI evaluation and safety. His monograph Human Development: A Re-education in Freedom, Love, and Happiness explores the developmental and institutional conditions of human flourishing.
He welcomes inquiries regarding supervision, collaboration, and correspondence.