Isabel Jacobs

CV

Isabel Jacobs works on philosophy, visual culture, and the history of science in Central and Eastern Europe. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Queen Mary University of London and an MA in Russian and East European Literature and Culture from University College London. Her postdoctoral research traces the reception of Goethe's morphology across the humanities and sciences during state socialism.

She is the editor of Kojève's first book on physics, On the Problem of a Discrete World (Leipzig: Merve, 2023), and co-editor, with Trevor Wilson, of a special issue on Kojève and Russian philosophy (Studies in East European Thought, 2024). She co-edited Authority, History, and Political Theology (Bloomsbury, forthcoming) and a volume of essays on Evald Ilyenkov (Brill, forthcoming). She is also a film critic, regularly reporting from international festivals for e-flux and the East European Film Bulletin.

Isabel organised multiple international conferences and was invited to deliver talks at universities in Europe, the United States, and China. Together with Katerina Pavlidi, she runs the Soviet Temporalities Study Group, supported by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES).

Work position: postdoctoral research fellow

Research Fields of Interest

• Philosophy in Central and Eastern Europe

• Aesthetics and Film

• History and Philosophy of Science

• Comparative Philosophy

• Environmental Humanities

• Plant Philosophy

Publications

Research articles

Translation of Alexandre Kojève, "Immanence and transcendence" (1939). Continental Philosophy Review (2025). Co-authored with Kyle Moore.

Solar Sacrifice: Bataille and Poplavsky on Friendship, Journal for Cultural Research 29:1–2 (2025), pp. 204–219.

Translation of Evald Ilyenkov, "Notes on Wagner", Studies in East European Thought 76:3 (2024), pp. 531–544.

Evald Ilyenkov, Filosofia: An Encyclopedia of Russian Thought, 2024

Introduction to Evald Ilyenkov, "Notes on Wagner", Studies in East European Thought 76:3 (2024), pp. 521–529.

Through the Looking Glass: Evald Ilyenkov's Images of the Ideal, Marxism & Sciences: A Journal of Nature, Culture, Human and Society 3:2 (2024), pp. 1–8. Co-authored with Sascha Freyberg, Martin Küpper and Trevor Wilson.

Interview: Rejuvenating the Revolutionary Essence of Marxist Theory at the Centennial of Evald Ilyenkov, Marxism & Sciences: A Journal of Nature, Culture, Human and Society 3:1 (2024), pp. 165–166.

Alexandre Kojève and Russian Philosophy, Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 76:1 (2024), pp. 1–7. Co-authored with Trevor Wilson.

Thinking in Circles: Kojève and Russian Hegelianism, Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 76:1 (2024), pp. 41–58.

Introduction to Alexandre Kojève's "Moscow, August 1957", Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 76:1 (2024), pp. 117–122.

Chapters

Morphological Materialism: A Time-Lapse of Soviet Plant Philosophy, London: CRMEP Publications, edited by Stella Sandford, pp. 23–48.

Out of Work: Kojève's Philosophy of Inoperativity, in Tyrants at Work, edited by Marco Filoni and Massimo Palma, Edizioni ETS (2024), pp. 9–21.

Wort und Welt: Kojève zur Bewegung, in Alexandre Kojève, Zum Problem einer diskreten "Welt," (2023), pp. 7–17.

From the Inexistent to the Concrete: Kojève after Kandinsky, in Alexandre Kojève, a Man of Influence, Lanham: Lexington Books (2022), pp. 27–51.

Popularization

Self-Branching Multitude: Hedwig Conrad-Martius as Plant Philosopher, Harvard Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative (3 April 2025).

Fragments from Damaged Life: Bertolt Brecht's Collages, e-flux Notes (July 2024).

Article on Alexander Dugin and the Global New Right, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (May 2024). Co-authored with Yelizaveta Landenberger.

Dancing and time: For Rachel Bespaloff, philosophy was a sensual activity, Aeon (December 2023).

Evald Ilyenkov's Ecology of Personality, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (November 2023).

Laboratory Life: Juri Lotman on Scientific Revolutions, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (April 2022).

Reality as Representation? Ernst Cassirer and Alexandre Kojève on Indeterminism, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (November 2021).

Rediscovering Boris Poplavsky: poet, exile and enfant terrible of Russia's Silver Age, Calvert Journal (October 2021)

Research grants, research stays, and awards

2026, Visiting Fellow, Institute of Contemporary History (INZ), Ljubljana
2025–2026, Social Relevance of the Humanities Fellow, Centre for Advanced Study Sofia
2025, Josef Dobrovský Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, CAS
2024–2025, Research Member, Centre for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CEREES), Queen Mary University of London
2023–2024, Associate Postgraduate, Critical Thinking in the Plural, Centre Marc Bloch Berlin
2022, Research Fellow, DFK Paris – German Center for Art History
2020–2024, Doctoral Studentship, London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP)
2019, Dean's List for Academic Excellence, University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies
2017, Erasmus, Department of Philosophy, University of Turin
2016, Visiting Student, Faculty of Philosophy, Saint Petersburg State University
2015, Grant, Summer School of Slavonic Studies, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic
 

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