David Guerrero, who earned a joint PhD in Sociology (University of Barcelona) and Philosophy (University of Groningen) under the supervision of David Casassas and Lisa Herzog, has been recognized with two major international awards in the field of political theory.
He has received the Leo Strauss Award 2025, granted by the American Political Science Association (APSA), for the best doctoral dissertation in political philosophy. The jury praised his thesis Reframing expressive freedom: free speech libertarianism, republicanism, and the political economy of communication for its “incisive and rigorous analysis of contemporary debates on freedom of expression” and for offering “an innovative revision of the neorepublican theory of free speech that incorporates a critical perspective on the political economy of the media.”
He has also been distinguished with the Sir Ernest Barker Prize in Political Theory 2024–2025, awarded by the Political Studies Association (PSA) of the United Kingdom, which recognizes the best doctoral thesis in political theory. The jury commended his “careful critique of the libertarian framework of free speech” and his “original and compelling neorepublican alternative.”
At the time the awards were granted, David Guerrero was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Germany. In January 2026, he will begin a Juan de la Cierva fellowship at the Department of Law of Pompeu Fabra University. He is currently working on a book based on part of his thesis, provisionally titled Vestige of laissez-faire: the free speech tradition and the political economy of communication.
The book aims to explain why, in the United States during the twentieth century, various disciplines in the social sciences and humanities converged on a conception of expressive freedoms as negative rights opposed to any form of state intervention, and how this conception later became the ideological and legal foundation of economic deregulation agendas.
Guerrero is also a member of the editorial board of Sin Permiso, part of the GREECS research group (Department of Sociology, UB), and co-founder of the Social History of Political Thought Group of the Catalan Society of Philosophy.
