Brian Coyne

Brian Coyne is a Lecturer in Political Science. Originally from New Jersey, he received his B.A. in Government from Harvard College in 2007 and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 2014. His approach to political theory is to see it as a set of tools that we can use to analyze, critique, and improve our politics, and in his work he tries to sharpen and expand our tools. His dissertation, "Non-State Power and Non-State Legitimacy," analyzes the power of non-state actors like corporations and international institutions that influence our lives and shape our politics alongside the state institutions that are the traditional focus of political theory. 

One of Coyne’s current research interests is what education for democratic citizenship needs to look like to face our many current challenges, and he has been part of the team developing the Citizenship in the 21^st Century class that is part of Stanford’s new first-year curriculum in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education. Coyne's other research interests include political representation, responses to climate change, and the politics of urban space and planning. An avid bicyclist, he has written freelance stories about two-wheeled travel for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. From 2014 to 2017, he taught in Stanford's Thinking Matters program and has also taught senior citizens at San Francisco State University's Osher Lifelong Learning Center and high school students at San Francisco College Track. His classes in Political Science at Stanford include Justice, Democratic Theory, Citizenship, Ethics and Politics of Public Service, and Liberalism & Its Critics. He has also taught with the Urban Studies Program and the Public Policy Program.