Marius Ostrowski

Marius Sebastian Ostrowski FRHistS FRSA (German: [ˈmaːʁɪʊs zɛˈbastɪan ɔsˈtʁɔvskiː]; born 12 December 1988) is a German-British political and social theorist, historian of ideas, and policy researcher. His research interests lie in the study of ideology and ideologies, focusing on how social contexts shape patterns of ordinary thinking and everyday behaviour. He also writes on national strategy, the theory and history of social democracy, in particular its origins in interwar socialist reformist thought, and progressive visions of European integration.

Marius Sebastian Ostrowski FRHistS, FRSA
Marius Ostrowski delivering a lecture at the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy conference 2024
Born	(1988-12-12) 12 December 1988 (age 36) Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Nationality	German, British
Occupation(s)	Academic and policy researcher
Academic background
Education	Nower Lodge School Colet Court Eton College
Alma mater	University of Oxford (BA, M.Phil., D.Phil.)
Thesis	Twilight of the pollsters: A social theory of mass opinion in late modernity (2017)
Doctoral advisor	Michael Freeden
Other advisors	Cécile Fabre · Jeremy Waldron
Influences	Louis Althusser · Eduard Bernstein · Pierre Bourdieu · Wendy Brown · Judith Butler · Nancy Fraser · Michael Freeden · Martin Heidegger · Niklas Luhmann · Arthur Schopenhauer · Theda Skocpol · Ann Thomson · Ellen Meiksins Wood
Academic work
Discipline	History · politics · sociology
Sub-discipline	History of ideas · ideology studies · social theory
Institutions	Magdalen College, Oxford All Souls College, Oxford European University Institute University of Nottingham Blavatnik School of Government

Early life

Ostrowski was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany,^[1] to parents from Sighișoara and Poznań. After living in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Kaiserslautern, Ostrowski immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1994, settling in Surrey. He first attended Nower Lodge School, Dorking (now defunct), then moved in 1997 to Colet Court (now St Paul's Junior School). In 2002, Ostrowski became a King's Scholar and Music Scholar at Eton College, where he achieved 10 A-levels, including Classical Greek, history, linguistics, mathematics, and music.^[2][3]

From 2007 to 2010, Ostrowski studied philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford, winning a Demy-fellowship and music scholarship at Magdalen College, and graduating with a First. He continued his studies with an M.Phil in political theory (2010–12), and a D.Phil. in politics (2012–17), under the supervision of Michael Freeden. His thesis Twilight of the pollsters: A social theory of mass opinion in late modernity offered a framework to understand the crisis of the opinion polling industry, drawing on the history of ideas, opinion research, political science, social psychology, and sociological theory. In 2013, Ostrowski won election to an Examination Fellowship in politics at All Souls College.^[4][5]

Career

While completing his D.Phil., Ostrowski taught politics at Christ Church and Magdalen College, Oxford, and the New College of the Humanities (now Northeastern University London).^[6] Beginning in 2018, he started a multi-volume translation of the collected works of Eduard Bernstein,^[7][8][9] and published Left Unity (2020),^[10] making the case for closer collaboration between progressive forces in society.^[11][12][13]

In 2020, he became a Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, pursuing a project on the ideological prehistory of the European Union, especially neglected Europeanist ideas in interwar progressive thought.^[14][15][16] During his time at the EUI, Ostrowski brought out his second monograph Ideology (2022), which develops a distinctive approach to ideology theory, building on the morphological approach of Michael Freeden.^[17]

In 2022, Ostrowski was appointed the founding director of the Lifelong Education Institute (LEI),^[18] a new thinktank focused on lifelong learning, integrated tertiary education, and the political economy of skills, with Ann Limb as its inaugural Chair. At the same time, he succeeded Michael Freeden and Mathew Humphrey as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Political Ideologies, and took up a position as Honorary Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research into Ideas and the Study of Political Ideologies, University of Nottingham.^[19]

With the support of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, he embarked on a multi-year project investigating the prospects for a European Universal basic income,^[20][21][22] which culminated in the book A Radical Bargain for Europe (2024).^[23] In 2024, Ostrowski left his role at the Lifelong Education Institute and returned to Oxford as an ESRC Policy Fellow and Researcher at the Blavatnik School of Government.^[24]

Music

Ostrowski began to learn piano at the age of 3, followed soon after by the clarinet, organ, and music composition, studying with Ruth Nye, Stephen Goss, and James Weeks. He remains an active pianist and composer, writing above all for keyboard.^[25] During the COVID-19 pandemic, he performed and recorded the entirety of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, published on his YouTube channel The Piano Diaries.

Selected compositions

• Processional March (2012) for organ, to celebrate the wedding of two friends in Magdalen College, Oxford.
• Fugue in E (2019) for piano.
• Reverie (2020) for piano.
• Concert Fantasia on Bella Ciao (2020) for piano, to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.
• Suite-sonata degli ostinati (2020) in four movements for piano, as a gift at the end of his fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.
• Hochzeitsstück (2022) for harmonium/piano, to celebrate the wedding of two friends in Bad Gastein, Austria.
• Saraswati stotram (2024) for piano.

Honours

In 2021, Ostrowski was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, United Kingdom.^[26] In 2023, he was appointed as one of the inaugural members of the Chamber of Legal Studies of the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy, Poland.^[27]

Selected works

Monographs

• Left Unity: Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)^[10]
• Ideology (Polity, 2022)^[17]
• (with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) A Radical Bargain for Europe: Progressive Visions of a European Basic Income (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)^[23]

Translations

• Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics: Essays and Other Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)^[7]
• Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution: Selected Historical Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)^[8]
• Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)^[9]

Articles

• ‘Social democracy and the “Europe question”: Lessons from Weimar?’, Renewal 27(1) (2019), 41–51.^[14]
• ‘How (Not) to Form a Progressive Alliance: Lessons from the History of Left Cooperation’, The Political Quarterly 92(1) (2021), 23–31.^[28]
• ‘Social Democracy and “positive” foreign policy: the evolution of Eduard Bernstein’s international thought, 1914–1920’, History of Political Thought 42(3) (2021), 520–64.^[29]
• ‘Ideology studies and comparative political thought’, Journal of Political Ideologies 27(1) (2022), 1–10.^[30]
• ‘"Reform or revolution", redux: Eduard Bernstein on the 1918–19 German Revolution’, Historical Research 95(268), 213–39 (2022).^[31]
• (with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) ‘The state of the UBI debate: Mapping the arguments for and against UBI’, Basic Income Studies 17 (2022).^[20]
• ‘From “noble patriotism” to the “republic of peoples”: Eduard Bernstein and the “national question” in Social Democracy’, History of Political Thought 43(3) (2022), 517–54.^[32]
• (with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) ‘Into the unknown: Empirical UBI trials as Social Europe’s risk insurance’, European Journal of Social Security 24(3) (2022).^[21]
• ‘The ideological morphology of left–centre–right’, Journal of Political Ideologies 28(1) (2023), 1–15.^[33]
• ‘Europeanism: A historical view’, Contemporary European History 32(2) (2023), 287–304.^[16]
• ‘Ideology and the individual’, Journal of Political Ideologies 29(1) (2024), 1–25.^[34]
• 'The apotheosis of conceptual morphology', Journal of Political Ideologies 30(1) (2025), 1–31.^[35]

Reports

• (with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) The European Basic Income: Delivering on Social Europe (Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2021)^[22]
• (with Dominic Afscharian) Building Resilient Democracies: Challenges and Solutions across the Globe (Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2022)^[36]
• Behavioural standards and learning outcomes in the English comprehensive school system (ResPublica, 2023)^[37]
• Behaving to learn: Best practice lessons for the behavioural turn in English schools policy (ResPublica, 2023)^[38]
• Hungry to learn: Lifelong Learning Pathways for the agri-food sector (Lifelong Education Institute, 2023)^[39]
• Making skills work: The path to solving the productivity crisis (City & Guilds and Lifelong Education Institute, 2024)^[40]
• Mapping the course: Education partnerships for continuous skills development (Lifelong Education Institute, 2025)^[41]
• UK national strategy in historical perspective: Turning points and ideological developments, 1850–2025 (Blavatnik School of Government, 2025)^[42]
• National capacities: A model for national strategy (Blavatnik School of Government, 2025)^[43]